TandeWrites

In honour of me continuing my tradition of committing to review all of my favourite reads the year, we’re going to be reviewing Vesuvius, a book that became one of my most anticipated upcoming releases from the moment I saw the deal announcement. I received an eARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Let’s begin!

<i>Vesuvius</i> is a queer young adult fantasy set in ancient Pompeii, featuring a cunning thief, a temple attendant, and a burning city. After Felix seizes an opportunity to steal a helmet in Pompeii, he discovers that it is not only a priceless artefact but a relic of the god Mercury. Pieces of his forgotten past begin to simmer when he touches it. Loren is plagued by nightmares of Pompeii’s destruction which grow clearer as the danger grows closer, and he knows they have days to uncover Felix’s ties to the relic and his own dreams if they have any hope of saving the city from the fury of Mount Vesuvius. But the city is ruled by bloody politics and unstoppable destinies, with dangerous, desperate people lurking in every shadow. Felix and Loren have to piece together their fates—and their growing feelings for one another—to make it out of the burning city alive.

There’s something about retellings and re-imaginings that I’m immensely fond of—these stories inspired by mythology and folklore and fairytales that litter my bookshelves—and it’s the fact that I often know how they’ll end. I enjoy the comfort of structure and routine, and I am someone who reads every spoiler about a film that I can find before I watch it, so the thing it takes to impress me in these books is the writing being so enthralling that I forget I already know about the ending. As readers, we know that Vesuvius will erupt, but we don’t know about the final days leading up to that inevitable moment, and I want those days to sweep me away from the tragedy.

I was captivated from Felix and Loren’s first meeting—broken and lonely boys bound to find each other through fate. Their relationship is built over only four days, but their distinct personalities—complete opposites in every way—and similar need to search for something to rediscover a missing part of themselves made the brief moment in time feel complex and fully developed. They’re not fast friends or star-crossed lovers when they meet. They’re not the Patroclus and Achilles dynamic that I was tentatively expecting, and I am glad about that, but I do love how the myth ties into the plot, and how history continues to be rewritten through Felix and Loren’s relationship. They don’t get along for the majority of their time together, and Loren’s visions make it difficult for him to trust the Felix that stands before him instead of the one he’s been seeing in his prophecies, and Felix is a flighty thief who has spent his life fearing the consequences of attachment. Their hidden secrets create this intense rift of distrust between them, but it’s these secrets that ultimately bring them closer to each other, and the dynamic shifts from something necessary to something they want, and this evolution towards trust is satisfying.

The author paints a vivid image of Pompeii, a city that is on the brink of falling apart physically and politically, but Loren can’t leave because it’s his home. He feels a loyalty to it, that he can fix it. There are a few equally vivid side characters that help bring the story to life. Sweet little girls with the urge to do the right thing, no matter how scary it is, and women who care for stray children as if they are their own, and guards with unfaltering loyalty, and Elias. Like other readers, I want to know more about Elias and his history with Loren, especially how their relationship seems to have broken down over time. I demand infinite short story spinoffs about these characters.

My one flaw with this book was the pacing—it just wasn’t working for me at later points in the book. The story takes place over four days, and so many things happened in those four days that I had to suspend my disbelief for a while when I thought about the timeline. I was having such a good time with the characters that I wasn’t thinking about the days. The eruption of Mount Vesuvius and the fleeing of the city (which is a prominent part of the book description) takes up one chapter? two chapters? of the story, and this makes the event feel almost insignificant in comparison to other moments in the plot. But, really, this is a book about two boys coming to terms with and escaping from their pasts, not the destruction of Pompeii, so maybe I can forgive the disaster taking a backseat.

Other reviewers also pointed out a few moments in which the language felt too modern, but this didn’t affect my immersion personally. I’m not expecting a young adult novel with a conversational tone to commit to inventing historical swear words. 

Overall, Vesuvius is an atmospherically stunning debut for fans of immersive mythology re-imaginings, tragedies where the characters spend the entire time trying to rewrite the ending, and broken boys trying to put themselves back together again.