This is a pretty ambitious book that mostly worked (for me). It’s a story about memory in a near future where memory editing and storage is possible. At the center of it is a gay love story and some pretty deep thoughts about what it means to share a life with someone, and how much of that is your memories. Since the book is a lot about the life of the mind, there’s a lot of thinky “in your head” stuff about longing and loss. There are some inception-like “Is this real or is it a simulation? Or a simulation inside a simulation?” bits so if those are dealbreakers, this is not the book for you. Got murky occasionally, mostly great.

I somehow picked this up thinking I might learn a bit about trilobites but this was actually a more standard kid graphic novel adventure story about a trilobite and his friend the walking whale as they try to... win a video contest? There is some good trilobite content at the end. It was a fun and well-illustrated read. I may be one of the few people who was not super familiar with Hale before this. Fun book.

This is the second (and last) book in a series where I adored the first book. But where the first book had a decent amount of whimsy & things that are cool to look at and learn about, this book felt like one large slow-motion trolley problem with a pretty high degree of suffering and trauma throughout. I’m the first to admit that this is a me thing, but as much as I love Pulley and her writing, I felt like this book was almost something to be endured. There was a deepening, sort of, about the relationship but the entire thing is making one person anxious and the other person doing a lot of machinations behind the scenes but also being vague and weird a lot of the time. Loved the descriptions of Japan, disliked that it was one long suffering exercise.