All Those Vanished Engines

by Paul Park

In All Those Vanished Engines, Paul Park returns to science fiction after a decade spent on the impressive four-volume A Princess of Roumania fantasy, with an extraordinary, intense, compressed SF novel in three parts, each set in its own alternate-history universe. The sections are all rooted in Virginia and the Battle of the Crater, and are also grounded in the real history of the Park family, from differing points of view. They are all gorgeously imaginative and carefully constructed, and reverberate richly with one another.

The first section is set in the aftermath of the Civil War, in a world in which the Queen of the North has negotiated a two-nation settlement. The second, taking place in northwestern Massachusetts, investigates a secret project during World War II, in a time somewhat like the present. The third is set in the near-future United States, with aliens from history.

The cumulative effect is awesome. There hasn’t been a three part novel this ambitious in science fiction since Gene Wolfe’s classic The Fifth Head of Cerberus.

Excerpt in the link.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Alternate History, Speculative Fiction, Fantasy, Steampunk, Science Fiction Fantasy

272 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 2014

About the author

Paul Park (born 1954) is an American science fiction author and fantasy author. He lives in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, with his wife and two children. He also teaches a Reading and Writing Science Fiction course at Williams College. He has also taught several times at the Clarion West Writing Workshop.

Park appeared on the American science fiction scene in 1987 and quickly established himself as a writer of polished, if often grim, literary science fiction. His first work was the Starbridge Chronicles trilogy, set on a world with generations-long seasons much like Brian Aldiss' Helliconia trilogy. His critically acclaimed novels have since dealt with colonialism on alien worlds (Coelestis), Biblical (Three Marys) and theosophical (The Gospel of Corax) legends, a parallel world where magic works (A Princess of Roumania and its sequels, The Tourmaline, The White Tyger and The Hidden World), and other topics. He has published short stories in Omni Magazine, Interzone and other magazines.

Reviews

[Mogsy · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 of 5 stars at The BiblioSanctum http://bibliosanctum.com/2014/12/05/b...

All Those Vanished Engines was a real doozy to read and rate, as you would expect of meta-fiction. I admit I’m quite inexperienced when it comes books that use it as a literary device, and my feelings for this book remain rather mixed. On the one hand, the ideas and themes in here intrigued me and I found the execution of those themes to be quite clever. That interest alone fueled me throughout the novel, but on the flip side, I don’t know if I could have soldiered on if the book had been any longer. At a quick 269 pages, I have to confess that was also just about as much as I could take.

Told in three sections, the story first begins in the post-Civil War era. The north is ruled by a Queen, who has negotiated a two-nation settlement after the conflict. The narrator here attempts to reconstruct her past through a series of journal, about a fanciful and bizarre future. The second part is told in an auto-biographical style, taking place somewhere in northern Massachusetts where Park recounts a story about a secret investigation during World War II. Within this section are also elements from a writing project by one of his writing protégés, as well as Park’s own Wizards of the Coast novel that he is working on at the time. The third part finishes things off supposedly in the future, with aliens from history. Again, it’s told in an auto-biographical style, but at this point my perception of these realities have become so frazzled, I’d long given up on teasing out any semblance of a plot or purpose.

In case you couldn’t tell, all of that was my clumsy and very inadequate attempt to recap the book. I found it very difficult to extract a summary from the prose alone, and I had to have help from the book’s own description to fill in some of the blanks for me. This is because all three sections and their characters and stories are jumbled or nestled within one another, making it never really all that clear what “reality” I’m in at any given time. I think the best way I can think of to describe this mind-bending approach is by using the example of the artist M.C. Escher’s Drawing Hands, which as it happens also gets a mention somewhere in the novel. The art piece depicts two hands rising from wrists that remain flat on a sheet of paper, drawing one another into existence. Like the hands, the three sections of All Those Vanished Engines feel as though they are both feeding and taking from one another, all at once and all together. It’s as confusing as it sounds, but I also thought it was original and quite ingenious.

Obviously, this novel is intended for a very niche audience. A lot of readers will no doubt struggle with it, and personally, I’m surprised I was able to read it almost to completion without getting the urge to abandon it. My taste in speculative fiction doesn’t typically run towards the abstract and “weird”, and this book most definitely fits both those labels.

But thanks to some of the reviews I’ve seen for this book, I was prepared to read this with a whole different perspective, and going in fully expecting that I was going to be stepping out of my comfort zone helped me immensely. Knowing what I do about this book now, I probably wouldn’t have picked it up if I had to do it all over again, but I also can’t deny a certain appreciation for particular aspects of it so hence I can’t say the experience was all that unenjoyable. I’d say give this one a shot if you’re into meta-fiction or if you’re feeling brave and hankering to take on something unconventional and way, way, way outside the box.

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘It’s all metafiction, all the time’; a line spoken by a character in All Those Vanished Engines that might also serve as a review of the book. This is a slippery, almost-impossible-to-describe novel that cycles through layers of fantasy, autobiography, alternate history… Feels like you would need to read it several times just to be able to pin it down. So dense and self-referential it reminded me of Gina Apostol’s novels. Incredibly interesting, even when it doesn’t quite work.

[Metaphorosis · Rating 2 out of 5]

reviews.metaphorosis.com

2 stars

Alternate past and alternate future mingle with a proto-memoir by Paul Park.

I first encountered Paul Park via The Starbridge Chronicles, a brilliant SF trilogy that was somewhat opaque, even difficult. I followed that to Celestis (disappointing), and The Gospel of Corax (very good, if surprising in nature). When his subsequent series A Princess of Roumania came out, I bought it right away - excited to at last see another Park novel, and about Romania, which I know a bit about. I wound up as disappointed as I had been excited. I read the entire series, but it never got better, and in fact got worse. I found it to be a mess of complex relationships, vague mysticism, and implausible alternate history. Still, the Starbridge trilogy sticks with me, so I looked forward to reading this new book.

Paul Park is, like Richard Grant and A. A. Attanasio, one of those authors whose work has both intensity and intelligence - an overtly intellectual tone that nonetheless reads well. You find yourself giving them the benefit of the doubt on opaque passages - willing to belief that maybe there's a layer of subtlety you've missed. Grant does best at bring the intellectual down to earth. Attanasio sometimes gets so carried away with layers of meaning that he forgets to offer a comprehensible story.

As for Park, I'm not sure what he's doing. In this novel, he's deliberately created layer upon layer upon layer, braided, interwoven, and any other metaphor you can think of. They're intensely self-referential - every character is a creator, affecting other realities, pasts, and futures through a sheer effort of will, often expressed via writing.

The book comes in several sections. In the first, two alternate historical narratives are tumbled together, deliberately confusing which character is the creator and which the creation - if either is at all. While an interesting concept, I found it difficult to immerse myself in it. This not because of the complexity - it's possible to get lost, but not too hard to keep track of what's happening if you try. But I found that more often than not, after setting the book down, I wasn't particularly interested to pick it up again. I just didn't much care about the characters.

Sadly, that was just as true of the second section, which is again complex meta-fiction mixed with what purport to be autobiographical sketches of Park and his family as expressed in a novel written by one of his writing students. There's only a mild effort to connect this with the earlier section, and I found it all of only mild interest.

The final section is told as further memoir by a future Paul Park, and draws together the overlapping elements of a literary family. There are many persons and many generations in play, and I simply didn't have the interest to try to keep them straight.

Park has taken a couple of concepts and images, and repeated them in multiple variations, as one might with a musical piece. Unfortunately the result is less harmony than cacophony. He also gives the appearance of trying to construct a novel from 'found' narratives - snippets from his family's old letters and books. If they're real, they're not well suited to the purpose. If they're invented, why make them quite so dull?

Park seems to have overthought and overplanned the book. It's hard to tell whether it's a complex conceit that he simply hasn't pulled off, or a clever idea that he's struggled too hard to turn into an excercise in self-conscious sophistication. In either case, it didn't work for me. It came across instead as a batch of unrelated parts held together with a thin layer of speculative fiction. As with Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet, there's clearly a lot here that would bring out new perspectives on re-reading, but I can't see ever wanting to go back.

I'm disappointed, especially because I was expecting more novel and less memoir (even if invented memoir). I'm also starting to consider the possibility that in fact,Park is just not as good as I first thought. I'm still likely to be interested in his next book, but if that one's not good, I may give up.

Finally, and because this is a novel so determined to be meta-fiction, it seems only fair to quote some of Park's own language in this review. (All from an advance reader e-copy).


"Traci believed decisively in cause and effect. You can always recognize that in an author, especially from a sketch. Every scene is arranged in careful order. Each one has a purpose." - an approach that Park clearly disdains.

"[T]he mere act of writing something down, of organizing something in a line of words, involves a clear betrayal of the truth. Without alternatives we resort to telling stories, coherent narratives involving chains of circumstance, causes and effects, climactic moments, introductions and denouements. We can’t help it." - This is clearly meant to be a key theme of the book, but the fact is that Park does not provide coherent narratives with clear causes and effects. That's intended, but it just doesn't work here.

"I turned toward the screen again, searching for a way to calm myself and to arrange in my mind these disparate narratives." - I wish that Park had realized just how disarranged the result remains.

"I always warned students against complexity for its own sake, and to consider the virtues of the simple story, simply told." - advice that Park certainly steered clear of in this case.

"It's all meta-fiction, all the time." - the best possible summation of the novel.

"I would choose at random various sentences and paragraphs, hoping to combine them into a kind of narrative, or else whittle them into an arrow of language that might point into the future." - exactly what Park appears to have done in turning his own family documents into a book.

NB: Received free copy via Net Galley.

[Annie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am left with one question after reading Paul Park's tripartite novella, All Those Vanished Engines. That question is "What the fuck?" All my other questions about this strange book can be summed up in that one useful phrase...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley for review consideration.

[Tom Gregorio · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read a review that indicated this book was pompous and pretentiously unreadable. 50 pages in and I had to concede that that was an accurate review. I could give many examples of why I thought it sucked but I won't waste any time: Either the author, publisher, and editor were all wasted or I was. I'm sober, straight, and sane so I'll let you make the call while I add Paul Park's Civil War reconstruction deconstruction to the list of books I'd use as digital toilet paper.

[Gerhard · Rating 1 out of 5]

“It’s all meta-fiction, all the time.”

“I always warned students against complexity for its own sake, and to consider the virtues of the simple story, simply told.”

These two quotes sum up what I found both fascinating and frustrating about this short novel of three inter-linked meta-narratives by Paul Park. On the one hand, Park rather dazzlingly conveys not only the potential of the written word, but the plasticity of the novel format itself.

We are so habituated to traditional narrative formats that any form of meta-fiction (simply understood as a recursive story, where the beginning and ending are enfolded into a Möbius Strip of multiple beginnings and endings) often takes us out of our comfort zone as readers.

As soon as we have to ‘work’ at a text in order to extract its meaning, the compact between author and reader changes, I think, where the reader becomes a far more active (and culpable?) creator of that particular text and its embedded meaning.

It is not that simple though, for on the other hand, meta-fiction often engages multiple levels of irony and various sleight-of-hand tricks to frustrate the reader in his or her quest for meaning. I think the main aim of this is to force the reader into thinking differently about how the text itself functions as a discrete unit, and the (sometimes contradictory) roles that the author and reader play in this process.

I say ‘contradictory’, because the main bugbear with meta-fiction is this: any reader not habituated to this particular form is unlikely to find any kind of conventional narrative satisfaction or resolution here; and hence is unlikely to read such a book, which defeats the stated purpose of educating readers into reading differently and thinking about texts differently.

The other problem I have with meta-fiction is that it is so self-interested in the mechanics of fiction that it is often hard to connect to the story and its characters emotionally. As I get older, I am finding that I really value an emotional connection to my reading. Yes, I am fascinated by books such as this, but they remain hard work and are often very difficult to connect with.

If this is your first exposure to meta-fiction of any kind, give this one a wide berth. Rather begin with David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas as a form of meta-fiction ‘lite’. Then again, if you are already a habitué of Mitchell, you will probably be fascinated to find out how far the form can be expanded and twisted in the hands of a dedicated writer like Park.

[Althea Ann · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is one of those cases of a whole being less than the sum of its parts.

There is some good writing here. I've had Park's 'Princess of Roumania' on by TBR for a while now, and I'm not revising my plans to read it.

However, this is very explicitly not in the vein of Park's other novels. It's more of a piece of writing *about* his novels (and a number of other things). It's metafiction that explores the differences between (and the intersection of) reality, memory, and imagination.

It's an ambitious project - and there are interesting ideas in it. But it doesn't pull together. I read all the way through, hoping that it would - that the random and disparate elements would come together in some kind of philosophical conclusion. But then... it just kind of fizzles out.

As I said, I'm still planning on reading some of the author's other work - but I wouldn't recommend this as a place to start (especially since it seems to refer to and discuss elements of Park's other published works, expecting a reader's familiarity with them.)

Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to read an advance copy...

[Kelly McCubbin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I heard an interview with John Crowley recently (through which I discovered this book) where he discussed what was essentially a catch 22 in science fiction and fantasy writing which was that expectations tended to be quite rigid in the forms so that someone like himself or Paul Park, who are writing in a way that could expand the genres, tend to be dismissed. It can't grow because it hasn't grown.
Charles Stross wrote something similar recently about how the idea of real world building has stagnated and how he doesn't read much science fiction anymore.
So I'm begging you, here. Step outside of your comfort zone. Do some heavy lifting. Read your Crowley and your Stross and your Paul Park. Grow the genre!
This is not an easy book. In fact I would recommend keeping a small list of names of characters and how they relate to each other because you will find names recurring over and over again, but pasted onto different characters. Some of the great revelations of the thing are when you find an antecedent to parts of the fiction within the "memoir". (Park is the definition of an unreliable narrator here, which he's not afraid to tell you.)
The book has been described as an elaborate puzzle, which is fair, but in some ways the artistry reminds me more of that of a talented boxer, bobbing, weaving and stick! And then gone again. It dares you to pin it down (Is she a woman on a horned beast, or a horned woman on a shaggy beast or a horned woman on a horned beast?) and then, and I've never seen this in a book before, expresses regret for tricking you.

And that's what this book is about... regret. (I can't help but imagine professor Rosenheim wincing at my figurative quote marks and extensive parenthetical asides... and these ellipses.) It tells you over and over. Regret over the loss of a Civil War battle or not being strong enough in your religion or succumbing to another man or not being able to care for your father or your autistic child... Literal armies of regret.

This is a work of brilliance. Take your time, it's a short book. When something sounds familiar, skim back through the book to find it. Luxuriate in the negative space where the engines once thrummed.

https://youtu.be/Y8IOkEFfq0g

[Steev Baker · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a work of postmodern fiction, "All Those Vanished Engines" has a plot twisted in on itself and layered on top of itself, full of self-referential winks and dream-like asides. Is it science fiction? If pressed, I would call it classic magical realism. The reader is never quite sure how much of the weird stuff has actually happened and how much has been created, dreamed, or hallucinated by the narrator(s). The story is told in three parts. Names, places, and events weave in and out of these parts, each of which comment on the family history of the narrator of the second and third parts. The first section almost stands alone as a piece of alternate history fiction, until it's subverted two-thirds of the way through by the intrusion of sci-fi tropes. The second section tells the heartbreaking story of a writer trying to decide what to do with his ailing father and autistic sister after his mother has died. His fragile emotional state is further aggravated by both his painful family history and his relationship with a student of his who is writing a work of fiction that, unbeknownst to her, mirrors his own childhood. The final part of the book takes place in the near-future. The narrator from the middle portion is now an old man, but has returned to the abandoned library of a ravaged city to find out why his life seems to be cursed. The connecting threads of these tales contain ghosts, aliens, lost manuscripts, hidden jewels, and a Civil War event called "The Battle of the Crater," which may or may not have had supernatural significance. Behind all of the narrative gymnastics, Paul Park has written a haunting work about how the decisions of the past, made by family members long dead, inevitably effect our own life and future in ways we will never be able to understand. The researcher and genealogist may uncover pieces of the map, but most of the connecting roads will remain shrouded in the shadow of story.

[Melliane · Rating 1 out of 5]

1.5/5

Mon avis en Français

My English review

I was hesitant to start this novel and it is true that the reviews were very mixed and it made me anxious. But I think you always have to try a novel by yourself to see how the story really is. The synopsis is rather vague so it’s pretty difficult to really know what will happen here.

I did not know Paul Park or his other series but it’s true that even if the idea is really intriguing and interesting for its originality, I struggled to get into the story. From the first part, we have a double story mixed in one but it was all too confusing and I wasn’t able to really understand what was happening. In the end, it’s true that I got out of the story without being able to hang on the rest of the novel. I’m sure the author has managed to create something very different from what we would typically find but I just think the whole thing was not for me unfortunately. I think it would be better suited to someone else.

[Stacy Bell · Rating 1 out of 5]

There was very little science fiction in this book. Sure, science fiction-y things were mentioned but while reading it I just felt like the author had just spewed verbal vomit all over the pages. I thought the first story was science fiction but the other two parts...well, I'm not sure what they were supposed to be...it was more like "here, I have all these ideas...all these thoughts drifting in my mind and I'll try to arrange them in some kind of order..." Good thing this was free (library book).

[Shaun Duke · Rating 2 out of 5]

"It occurs to me that every memoirist and every historian should begin by reminding their readers that the mere act of writing something down, of organizing something in a line of words, involves a clear betrayal of the truth." -- All Those Vanished Engines by Paul Park (Pg. 173)
Of the novels I've reviewed in the last year, this is by far one of the most difficult. All Those Vanished Engines (2014) by Paul Park is not your typical SF novel. It is layered, divergent, and postmodern. If I were to describe this book in a single phrase, it would be "a destabilized metanarrative about art and history with mindscrew tendencies." Though I appreciate the ambitiousness of Park's narrative styling and prose, All Those Vanished Engines is a somewhat cold work.

All Those Vanished Engines (ATVE) is essentially a collection of three novellas. The first is the most mystical of the bunch. Set during an alternate post-Civil War America, it follows Paulina as she attempts to make sense of her past by way of a fictional journal about a science fictional future. As the narrative progresses, however, the journal and the real world become increasingly closer to the same thing, destabilizing the reality with which the novel opens. Of the three narratives, this is by far the most compelling, not only because of its deliberate meta-ness, but also because of the way that meta-ness manipulates the actual reality of the text. The interaction between fiction and a fiction-within-a-fiction produces a chilling effect that is somewhat absent throughout the rest of the book, in no small part because this is the only section which seems dedicated to uprooting the reader's grasp on something "real." What became apparent as I continued reading, however, is that each individual section might have been better served as its own novel. The first narrative clearly connects to the second and third, but the first narrative's closing moments leave too much wide open -- too many questions unanswered.

The second narrative is the first seemingly autobiographical section, drawing upon Park's actual writings to examine the writing practice (a supposed postmodernist trait) and a (initially) fictional account of a dying man's confessions about a secret project conducted during the Second World War (presumably some variation of the Manhattan Project, but with a distinctly 50s nuclear-monsters quality to it). Much of the section follows the narrator as he tutors another writer in the literary art, but it jumps between the narrator's personal relationships and his efforts to write a novel (Park's only Wizards of the Coast contribution). Though I am a fan of the postmodern tendency towards self-awareness of the processes of fiction, the second section seemed to me a tad overindulgent, drawing so much attention to the narrator's writing process as to shove the remaining narrative elements into the background. In particular, I found myself more interested in the bizarre Manhattan-style project and the narrator's relationship with his family than the long digressions into the fictionality of fiction. Unfortunately, much like the previous section, this one doesn't offer any sense of closure, leaving much to be desired.

The third narrative (the Nebula-nominated novell, "Ghosts Doing the Orange Dance") is also autobiographical in form, appearing to take place both in the future of the first narrative and during the period in which Park wrote A Princess of Roumania (2005). The cover copy identifies this third narrative as occurring in a near-future U.S., though this must be a remarkably subtle shift forward, as I failed to notice what identified the narrative's events as "in the future" (I may have forgotten, since each of Park's sections contain multiple intersecting narratives and time periods). Regardless, here, Park's marriage to the metanarrative and the seemingly deliberate memoirist focus settles around the history of Park's grandfather, Edwin, and an unsolved murder in the Park-McCullough House -- a real historical house from the 1860s, which I assume was once owned by Park's actual family; the narrator returns to the house on his journey through his family's history, unpacking some of the house's "secrets." The third section is less abstract than the second, in part because the metanarrative focuses on a multi-layered examination of Edwin Park's "real" writings (real in the fictional world, at least) in relation to the writing process of the narrator (presumably, Paul).

Though this third section returns to the uprooting of reality present in the first narrative (as a form of closure, it seems), I must admit to being somewhat frustrated with the structure and direction. By the time I arrived at "Ghosts Doing the Orange Dance," I think I had gotten to the point where I wanted the ATVE to stop with its literary games and get to a "point" or "root" that would tie everything together. This became especially important to me because my own knowledge of the manipulated materials is inadequate, a problem which may not bother fans of Park's work. ATVE is primarily an alternative history with a heavy dose of what appears to be autobiographical material. Much of the shifts in history revolve around the Civil War, a period which I am woefully uneducated. While some of Park's shifts are obvious (aliens in the first narrative), the other shifts are less so, such that references to characters and moments were, for me, somewhat abstracted. This is made more difficult by the fact that many aspects of the novel seem to refer to Park's real life and his family, particularly in the second and third narratives, which focus on writing (with references to Park's work) and family (presumably Park's actual family members, or analogues thereof).

The abstractness of the novel, in other words, became too overbearing for me. For me, it seemed as though the novel lacked a grounding element, something to tie the reader to a solid reality. A time period doesn't seem like enough to me, especially since the novel is split across three narratives set in what seem to be different versions of reality. I could tell that there was a purpose behind this narrative strategy, but what that purpose was never quite materialized as I read the novel. It may be that this is the kind of book that demands additional readings; certainly, one would be hard pressed to suggest this is traditional SF, as Park's style and delivery are far more in tune with the literary vein of the field than with the more public face of the genre.

Abstraction is not necessarily a bad thing, however. ATVE's abstractness -- or my perception thereof -- or unrootedness, perhaps, needed to be facilitated by some sort of closure which would clearly tie things together so that an additional reading would not only seem immediately valuable, but also necessary. That closure, however, doesn't really exist for any of the individual narratives. I always got the feeling that Park felt compelled to stop in media res. It immediately made me think of Margaret Atood's Surfacing (1972), which has no discernible plot and engages postmodern metanarrativity in a less pronounced manner than ATVE. But that novel ends up "somewhere." That "somewhere" may be unexpected -- the main character has a mental breakdown which some have interpreted as a feminist social break from the patriarchal standards of society -- but it is still a "somewhere." Surfacing's plotless ending also leaves an opening, as what we learn about the main character's almost violent rejection of society doesn't close off the character's possible narratives; the novel's narrative, as the title might suggest, does end. But ATVE seems to lack this closure -- or, if such closure exists, it didn't read as such to me.

In the end, I think my issue with ATVE is that I found it more frustrating than anything else. I recognize the strategies at play -- and even appreciate them -- but the destabilizing effect of the three vaguely-connected narratives continuously pulled me out of the reading process. I became too self-aware that I was reading a book which seemed determined to force me to think about the narrative process through an autobiographical funnel. But without either a grounding narrative (a plot, for example) or a ground frame of reference (a singular, clear "setting"), ATVE fell flat more often than not. Ambitious it may be -- as the cover copy enthusiastically declares -- but its success is questionable.

Based on what I know about Park's other work, I suspect this will be a novel best appreciated by his dedicated readers. For me, it was a miss.

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m just not smart enough for what was happening here. I didn’t understand or follow it.

[Scribblegirl · Rating 1 out of 5]

In my life, I have hated two books enough to want to destroy them. Paul Park's "All Those Vanished Engines" is definitely the one I wish to destroy most. I have never hated a book so badly in my life. I made it through 2 of the 3 sections and part of the 3rd. Ever more appalling, each section is so overlayered and filled with the names of characters who either MIGHT be real or aren't even in the book (most of whom are neither relatable nor likeable) that I ceased to give a damn who any of them were or why Park thought I should care. Each section is more nonsensical and less interesting than the preceding.

It infuriates me that trees died for this.

[Nigel · Rating 5 out of 5]

An astonishing, brilliant, challenging meditation on memory, reality and imagination, the three engines that drive us or through which we drive, cobbling together our visions of ourselves and our families and the world. In the past a girl writes a story about a boy in the future, or is the boy in the future telling a story about a girl in the past? Their strange adventures intertwine like a moebius strip, one of the best technical achievements of such I've seen outside comics. An interview with an elderly engineer about a secret World War 2 project turns out to be the textual element of an art installation, written by a writing teacher and science fiction writer visiting home not long after the death of his mother, wrestling with the next step of putting his father in a nursing home and worrying about his severely autistic sister. Many years later the writer explores his family history dating back to the Civil War and earlier using documents left behind by ancestors on both sides, alluding to a strange nocturnal war with the dead.

So, not a conventional narrative, but a playful one that takes itself seriously and makes few concessions other than being up front about what it is doing and not doing. Books like these are frustrating as hell if you don't just let go of preconceptions and go with it. Park seems to be exploring the way he uses his personal life and his family history in his fiction, and the middle section in particular has some brutal, but also haunting, insights into writing not as a process but as a state of mind, almost. Memory and imagination twist reality in ways subtle and not-so-subtle. What can the reader trust and what can the writer? Not much, but you can certainly enjoy the results, and every now and then you can pick up a weapon and fight back against the armies of the dead from the past that are devouring the future.

[Maria Beltrami · Rating 1 out of 5]

All that Iunderstand of this book is that it is a story of dystopian fiction set just after the Civil War, secession "happily occurred" and that gave birth to two matriarchy.
The remainder is so full of metastructures, stories that come into other stories, made on purpose misspellings that make the reading difficult, to the point to be completely incomprehensible.
Let me be clear, I am not opposed to meta-narrative, indeed, often providing pieces of literature really intriguing, but honestly here we go too far.
I would invite the author to look a little less the masterpiece and a bit more the comprehensibility of what he says.
Thank Tor Books and Netgalley for providing me with a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

Tutto quel che si capisce di questo libro è che si tratta di una una storia di fantascienza distopica ambientata subito dopo la guerra di secessione, secessione "felicemente avvenuta" e che ha dato vita a due matriarcati.
Il resto è talmente pieno di metastrutture, di storie che entrano in altre storie, di errori di ortografia voluti ma che rendono difficile la lettura, da essere del tutto incomprensibile.
Sia chiaro, io non sono contraria alle metastorie, anzi, spesso riescono a fornire dei brani di letteratura davvero intriganti, ma qui sinceramente si esagera.
Inviterei l'autore a cercare un po' meno il pezzo di bravura e un po' di più la comprensibilità di quel che racconta.
Ringrazio Tor Books e Netgalley per avermi fornito una copia gratuita in cambio di una recensione onesta.

[Jeff Raymond · Rating 3 out of 5]

I never know where books that are ambiguously experimental sit on the spectrum. All Those Vanished Engines is one of those strange books that pulls from real life and from alt-history/science fiction to provide a strange tale overall that doesn't always work for a lot of reasons.

On one story we have a post-Civil War situation with the North and South split. The second a more modern post-World War II tale with a lot of references to Second Life, the third act a futuristic alien tale, all tied together with a writing of sorts that transcends all of them.

Why doesn't this work? I didn't find a ton to care about, and the settings felt abstract enough to not engage me the way I expected to. I love alternate history and futurism and this just didn't have enough of either. It subverted a lot of stuff, but just not incredibly well.

I get why people like this book, and I'm actually interested in reading more of Park's work. This one, though? Not quite my thing, and I can't recommend. Closer to a 2.5.

[Daniel Cunningham · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a strange book. To say the least.

Apparently, many people strongly disliked it; I actually found it interesting, confusing, misleading, meandering... and a good read.

But I fully understand people not liking it. This is a book that requires a certain... reader? attitude? patience? point of view? ...a certain something to enjoy, and is definitely not for everyone.

[Emily Park]

I am so confused, I have no idea if I liked this or not. I think I did? But I also think I missed a lot of things. Probably going to have to mark this as one to re-read soon...

On another note, I think there's a very good chance that the author of this book may be a distant cousin of my father's, as his side of the Park family was also involved in the Civil War and lived in Virginia.

[Neal Holtschulte · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fascinating read, but not a straightforward one. The novel explores the interplay of memory, reality, and imagination, and does so using stories within stories, with some stories bleeding beyond their boundaries. It's an interesting read and a surprisingly smooth one for how complex it can be, but it's not any sort of traditional hero's journey so it's not for everyone.

[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

Experimental meta-fiction gets old fast

[Robert Hudder · Rating 3 out of 5]

Everything will be all right. Sacrifices will be made. Some will be no more but it will be all right.

The thing with metafiction and narratives between books is that it may be best to resist the urge to dig and get distracted. Is a true fact any better than a fake fact? Is the truth of the book reliant on how you interpret or research whether a particular reference is real?

Strangely, Lovecraft and Markson live in the same place as this book. There is a strange cosmic horror and intertwined reality with the whiff of mythos creation throughout. There is the chopped, jarring notes of this story and that story and jumps made, successfully and sometimes not. Always questioning the veracity of the author, the main character and the prime reader.

The words are excellent here. Logic is sometimes too slippery. A novel that even for its requirement to concentration was worth it.

You can read the outline of the story elsewhere. It was a nice conceit but not why I continued to read the book. I liked unpeeling (yes, I meant unpeeling) the onion and being rewarded. Resistance to easy truths made this an easier read. It is a personal story in some ways.

If you like Iain Banks, then this may appeal.

[Ken Richards · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars
A mystical and magical reminiscence of family history, alternate history and the unreliability of memory. It is both dreamlike and confusing, with limpid prose and cloudy detail. There are Civil War battles, alternate Confederacies, betrayal and redemption wrapped up in the braided storylines of this tangled work.
Not sure if I understand it at all, but it is beautifully crafted.

[Hannah · Rating 3 out of 5]

By the first few pages I thought this was going to be a 2
Star rating because it was so confusing but then it got interesting. After it was interesting, he moved onto Part 2. I was left hanging for more only to be confused again.

Part of me wants to try this style as a writing experiment. What would my memoir be like if it was a sci-fi novel?

[Kivrin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Can I give it no stars? What a weird book and a complete waste of time. It's written in a weird multi person viewpoints stream of consciousness! I kept waiting for some kind of story to come together, but it never happened! Completely bizarre.

[Carl Harris · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not a fan. The book started out promising, with the psudeo-steampunk, alternate history Civil War story, but then became a quagmire of gobbledygook and ramblings. The latter two-thirds of the book seemily having to point whatsoever. One out of five stars.

[Elizabeth Birr · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is literally the only book I haven’t finished in years... so yeah. I tried so hard to keep going but 70 pages in I could not for the life of me follow the story. Not only was the storyline just overly weird, but also not enough details were provided.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent, layered, inventive, unusual book. It would have been better served to have been published as literary fiction rather than by a science fiction publisher, because, from some of the reader reviews I've seen, it isn't what they expected or wanted.

[Steve · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh.

[Christina Rum · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not the best introduction to Mr. Park's work...