Word Out 2014

Dissonance, by Erica O’Rourke

Reviewed by Julia (Richview YAG)

Whenever a choice is made, a pivot forms in the fabric of reality from which parallel might-have-been worlds, or Echoes, are spun off, worlds in which the opposite choice was made.  This is the premise of the novel Dissonance, which is set in the present day, but, unlike most books, is set not only in the Key World most of us know but in countless numbers of its Echoes.  Delancey Sullivan and her family are Walkers, people born with a genetic mutation that allows them to hear the frequencies of these Echoes and Walk between realities.  Del is training to learn to cleave, to cut away Echoes that create problems for the Key World so that the threads of these alternate realities unravel.  That is, until she accidentally cleaves a world on an unauthorized Walk and is suspended from training.  Her one consolation is her clandestine meetings with Echoes of Simon Lane, a popular basketball player who never would have noticed her at school in the Key World.  Soon, however, Del begins to notice oddities in the behaviour of these Echoes, leading her to uncover secrets and spin plots that threaten the fate of the multiverse.  Through Del’s endless Walking, O’Rourke artfully explores the nature of reality itself, and the beauty and danger in losing oneself in might-have-beens.

One of the aspects of Dissonance that makes it unique is the way in which O’Rourke establishes the physics and complexities of Walking and cleaving, both through explanations woven into the story and excerpts from Del’s textbook, “Principles and Practices of Cleaving, Year Five” which appear at the beginning of each chapter.  The concepts are clearly well-thought out and do not leave the reader confused or wishing there was more explanation.  A brilliant decision was that to link the fabric of reality to music: each world rings at a certain frequency, sometimes worlds can be “tuned,” and occasionally inversions or “Baroque events” occur.  In doing this, the author uses music as a metaphor for the universe, which has an almost haunting and certainly beautiful effect on the reader.  Like music, the multiverse has immutable laws, but it can also go out of tune or hurt a person’s ears.  Overall, I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who enjoys fantasy but is looking for something different, to anyone who loves or has any understanding of music, and to anyone who occasionally wonders what their world might have been like had someone made slightly different choices along the way secret.