Wellside

by Robin Shortt

Ben is stuck in a backwater town, his parents have broken up, and he's facing jail time for some very poor choices.Essa is stuck in a backwater world, trapped by a vengeful ex-lover and cut off from the Well, the infinite pit lined with doors to countless realities.A lucky accident (not so lucky for Ben) frees Essa and now they're both in the Well, with its invisible lizards, cities hung from cats'-cradles and Library made of sand.Essa wants revenge. Ben wants a way home. The awakening of an ancient threat to the Well puts both their plans on hold. On the run, their only allies a clockwork spider and a girl made of iron, they'll have to work together to save all the worlds.

400 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 1, 2017

Reviews

[Dion Perry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ben is the high school geek who has a crush on Essa who’s the weird foreign girl. She came out of the Well, a hole through reality that is accessed through doors. Ben has some problems with the law but they pale when Essa takes him through one of the doors into the Well. Here Essa’s past catches up with her and they are sent cascading from one problem to the next as they try to save existence from annihilation.

Wellside is weird but in a good way. It is fantasy, mixed with SciFi with a pinch of steampunk and romance added. The story concept is unique, the world building is incredible and I liked all of the characters. Ben, I thought could have been a little tougher, but in the end, he more than holds his own. Essa is complicated, yet the author brought all of her facets together to build a character who was likable, witty, articulate and kind. I particularly liked the way the relationship between Essa and Ben unfolds. Essa stands by him as a mate even though she thinks he’s not worthy to be her boyfriend and she thinks he’s a little green. Yet she comes to respect him across the length of the book which allows him to prove his worth and win her over. It was subtle and carefully constructed romance with no mush which for once actually seemed plausible.

The other beings added weirdness but I loved the fact that we were not drawn into horror. The way in which the author handled civilisations living on a vertical shaft I thought was superb. The use of technology, and at times the lack of it, and the politics was also interesting and well handled.

Generally, I loved this book. It is one that I will read again and I would recommend it to anyone who can handle weird. I am looking forward to reading more from this author.

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

The idea of a Well between worlds is neat–I enjoy world-hopping adventures. Somewhat original in here is the idea that there are actual towns suspended within the Well. The Red Sand Library is also really neat and original. However, I found the Powers to be very monolithic. All of the Cogs were largely the same; all of the Vats’ agents were largely the same. We only saw some variation in the Librarians through seeing Essa’s background, and there were only two individualized Librarians besides her.

I also found it difficult to really understand the Library. It’s an Intelligence, and the Librarians are researchers. There are creatures called Isms that the various Librarians serve, and which sometimes do battle. I never understood how exactly they do research. And other than Essa’s attempt to research how to create new Doors–something only the Exile knows how to do before her–I never understood what most of the Librarians research. Most of the flashbacks to Essa’s past explore the relationships between her, an old friend of hers, and a Librarian named Gregor, who ends up in the middle of the war against the Exile along with Essa. The unusual things Essa can do involve her Ism and red sand and strange symbols she forms with her hands or writes directly into the sand, and I never got a handle on that. It feels kind of hand-waved, especially when Ben (who happens to be a hacker) gets involved on his laptop.

What’s there is really neat, but I felt like there needed to be more. More variation among the Powers and a greater understanding of how the Library worked. This is an enjoyable book, however, and I’d like to see more of this world.


Original review posted on my blog: http://www.errantdreams.com/2019/04/r...

[Meredith]

I read the first 31%. I may go back and finish sometime, but for now I’ve set it down.

It was really compelling at first. I first checked it out because of the beautiful cover art. After I “looked inside” on Amazon, I had to have it. I breezed through the first four chapters and only set the book down because my car trip ended. But the further I get, the more lost I feel.

I feel like this could be a good movie. There’s a lot of weirdness, in a good, creative way. It’s contemporary, it’s portal fantasy, it’s science fiction. The settings seem like they’re pretty cool and imaginative.

But I can’t picture any of it, outside of Chifley. The odd chapters (the Ben chapters) are really difficult to picture any of the scenery, machines, or creatures. The even chapters (the Essa flashbacks) feel like they’re all going to come together and make sense in the end, but at the moment I’m very lost. There are a lot of Names of Things that are capitalized and obviously mean something to the characters, but they aren’t explained. Essa has some conflict with her friend Rachana, but I can’t figure out why. I can’t tell whether it’s all supposed to remain mysterious, or we’re supposed to figure it out from the context.

One last note: one of the creatures has a name written in some East Asian script (I don’t know which one). I’m not sure if this is intentional, or a Kindle glitch?

[Simon Petrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shortt’s envisaged universe is fractally strange, its grotesqueries catalogued with unflinching precision. The setting seems something like a turf war between Hieronymus Bosch and Salvador Dali, a steampunked, anime’d, cylindrified riff on C. S. Lewis’s ‘Wood between the Worlds’, populated by escapees from Miyazaki’s Spirited Away and from all those nightmares too strange to remember the next day. The book brims with full-throttle widescreen weirdness and, wonderfully, it just doesn’t let up. But it is, I think, the strength of characterisation that is the book’s principal achievement, with protagonists such as Essa, Winter, and Gardenback as solid and as plausible as they are inscrutable. It’s an achievement equal to that seen in the best and strangest works of, say, Greg Egan, where the characters simultaneously seem to embody the essence of alienness and the idea of humanity. It’s this kind of thing that makes a book seem far larger than its borders.

[Tina · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really entertaining read. Like an action movie in book form. Very vivid descriptions of world hopping adventures. Interesting characters.

A bit of hand wavy math stuff of the lolwut? Variety but otherwise a fun book.

[Leife Shallcross · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book. Disclaimer: I also read an early draft of it, but I loved it then, too. Robin Shortt has created such a unique and breathtakingly original world (or...er...worlds) with this book. Long after finishing it I'm still yearning to dive back in. The vibe is something like a cross between vintage Luc Besson movies and Labyrinth. There are disembodied brains driving clockwork spiders, sentient mountains, an iron girl and and and...
Wonderful.