I’ll have to come back here and edit my review when I’ve been able to write a longer or better one, but to sum up; this book is odd and extraordinary.
At the start, I wasn't sure I would like this, and I couldn't understand the setting; we're listening to a robot whose memories were recovered from a post-apocalyptic world, and as we do so we follow 2 poets traveling across the said world, as poet-bards. I'm not clear on that bit, and I will need to read the start again.
Either way, Myhre uses that setting to explore racism, homophobia, poetry, sexism, and violence without naming names. This setting gives him a lot of freedom to explore things, for example, 'Revenge is the best Success' is a great poem, but works even better in this setting rather than a more standard book of poems. The poems on Hen March are great, but an entire book on Hen March may not have worked the way these poems in this setting did and how they made us switch between the past and the present.
I also loved how the poets cross paths with so many unreasonable people and are brushed aside every time they speak the truth; it's indicative of not only the role art has in our lives, but also of how truth still exists, someone does still speak it, even when it looks like the majority doesn't agree with it.
Thank you NetGalley for the chance to read and review this book!