S.

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Abrams, Jeffrey	4-week checkout	Due 04-10-2024

Title from slip cover.
Title page and cover title: Ship of Theseus / V. M. Straka. Imprint on title page: Winged Shoes Press, New York, 1949. Title page and page [3] of cover printed with "stamps" of Laguna Verde High School Library; spine includes a Dewey call number label.
Includes 22 items purporting to be documents concerning the "author," V. M. Straka, and his "translator," F. X. Caldeira from the Straka Arkiv; letters, post cards and notes by the "readers," Jennifer and Eric; and other related materials.
Marginalia printed in various colors.
Ship of Theseus / V.M. Straka.
"A young woman picks up a book left behind by a stranger. Inside it are his margin notes, which reveal a reader entranced by the story and by its mysterious author. She responds with notes of her own, leaving the book for the stranger, and so begins an unlikely conversation that plunges them both into the unknown. The book: Ship of Theseus, the final novel by a prolific but enigmatic writer named V.M. Straka, in which a man with no past is shanghaied onto a strange ship with a monstrous crew and launched onto a disorienting and perilous journey. The writer: Straka, the incendiary and secretive subject of one of the world's greatest mysteries, a revolutionary about whom the world knows nothing apart from the words he wrote and the rumors that swirl around him. The readers: Jennifer and Eric, a college senior and a disgraced grad student, both facing crucial decisions about who they are, who they might become, and how much they're willing to trust another person with their passions, hurts, and fears."--slipcase.

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

Library Journal Review
Summary / Annotation
Fiction Profile
Author Notes

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

okay submitted by sonaowens on June 18, 2019, 6:29pm not great

A miss submitted by sjarvis on July 21, 2019, 10:10pm Great idea for a book. I loved the margin notes back and forth offering a second story line. But the execution of this book fell flat.

Alr submitted by ann arbor air on June 13, 2021, 11:46am It’s ok

S submitted by Ange on July 27, 2021, 11:35am .

Could be great theoretically but ehhhhh submitted by mintaroni on July 13, 2023, 9:58pm This book is odd to write a review for because I'm not sure whether to review it as 2 books but for the sake of brevity I'll try to review it as one.

Conceptwise I really love the choice to have a plot set entirely in the margins of a different book however execution felt like it could have been slightly better. Ship of Theseus is supposed to be a fake classic book and unfortunately it does read like a classic book in that it was often tedious and unnecessarily long. I think that the authors needed it to be the length it was in order to fit in some of the ciphers, footnotes, and annotations however in practice it really felt like the book should have had a few less chapters. Both the fake book plot and the annotation plot sometimes felt a bit repetitive and uninteresting and some details are mentioned repeatedly while other important ones are buried(though I admit there are good in universe reasons for some.) The momentum of both in book and "IRL" storyline loses some speed around midway but recovers for the final third. The story/concept was compelling enough I could not DNF it even though I definitely considered it around that midway point(mostly due to the headache and workload of it, not so much because of the story). I'm very glad I finished it and I did recommend it to a friend who likes difficult reads and solving puzzles.

As for the characters and two major romances, I was definitely fairly invested in them even though I feel like more could have been done with the female characters, espescially Jenny who while I appreciate the effort was put in to not make her a flat and cliche female character, her backstory and execution felt a bit confused to me, esp in comparison to Eric who has such real flaws, character growth, and a backstory that did hit where Jen's didn't. FXC obviously has my eternal love and deserved better but I think the authors would agree with me on that front!

Overall, this is a memorable read for me but not one I see myself rereading beyond a flip through for the annotations. If you like to work for your meal and are a fan of secret societies, "dark academia", ciphers and puzzles then this is for you. Or if you just want to read something completely unique and are willing to put up with some extra homework to get it.