The Book of Elsewhere: A Novel by Keanu Reeves and China Miéville

B is surviving, but not living. Existing with unconscious effort for over eighty thousand years, brought forth by a myth-spinning mother and lightning bolt of a father, he has been a weapon from birth and cannot avoid a life dedicated to killing, though he cannot die himself. Such an existence must be exhausting, and in actor Keanu Reeves‘ debut novel The Book of Elsewhere, written alongside veteran novelist (incidentally a favorite of Keanu’s) China Miéville, we are given snippets of chaos and piles of bodies, lists of weapons and styles of death, and the exhaustion of B (short for Berserker but also known as Unute), permeates the text.

“I don’t want to die. What I want is mortality, and that’s not the same thing.”

Despite his continuing resurrections, B still feels his many varied expirations. He suffers intensely each time he’s maimed, blasted with bullet holes or suffocated or lit on fire. His pain and death never lingers, so again and again he awakens, again and again he feels the torture of life, watching acquaintances grow and perish, tying himself to nothing and no one. He’s experienced the very worst of humanity. At one point, he admits: “My kidnapper just kept on killing me. Research, I guess.”

He is god-like in ferocity and immortal power, re-hatching from an “a great egg … a big ovoid shape, leathery, upright, glued to the surface with remains of its own flesh,” appearing at a different location each time. This was not always the case, however. In his early years he spent time in pre-Indonesia with a pack of wild pigs, barbirosas. One unlucky pig was touched by lightning the way he was, and now it haunts him eternally. They hunt one another in a graphic dance across the ages.

“As Much of a Nightmare as a Dream”

The Book of Elsewhere rides its premise threadbare, and what trails forward is hallucinatory and wildly imagined, as much of a nightmare as a dream. The violence is visceral and the characters are sparse, but I believe the authors decided on an experience in mood more than any true plotline they could conjure. There is a big defining feature here though: loneliness. For when a decidedly dead soldier comes back to life, B’s interest is piqued. Maybe, just maybe, he’s not alone in his abilities.

In a nonlinear fashion, we see B jump from life to life and back to the present day, periodically visiting with some of history’s most complex, philosophical minds. Since B cannot become mortal when he so desperately desires to, and is haunted by an eternally grouchy pig, it seems logical to need some form of therapy.

While the story is similar in vein to Keanu’s previous outing centered on B, 2015’s BRZRKR (BOOM Studios), a graphic novel with plenty of visual bite to match B’s rough edges, the novel extension of B’s character dives deeper. Though the threads seem to flail in opposing and riotous directions for chapters on end, there are patterns of cohesion being woven throughout the narrative.

Sci-Fi Meets Surrealism

Beyond B’s historical figure visits, chapters switch between third person present tense of B and his colleagues, handlers of a killing machine they cannot handle at all; he doesn’t listen to rules and is, in effect, unstoppable. That they attempt to exploit him is a no brainer, attempting to create the ultimate, perfect soldier. What ambitious military operation wouldn’t? Devoted to him are also, appropriately, cults.

The Book of Elsewhere is definitely a sci-fi novel worth reading with squinted eyes and a thesaurus on hand, with looping, delirious writing, but to those who love a good romp of the surreal, there is a method to the madness. So be prepared, settle in for some acid spun sentences and you may end up being pleasantly disoriented and thoroughly satisfied with the feeling.