My Novella - An Index of Vanishing is Officially Open For ARC Readers
Tibet, 1938. He was sent to watch her. He never expected her to see him.
Matthias Krüger is a young SD intelligence officer posted to a remote Himalayan monastery with simple orders: observe the Reich's most classified paranormal asset, report on her progress, remain detached.
They call her Leise. She reads Dostoevsky between rifle shots, sings on the high ridges at dawn, and can vanish into thin air. She looks at him like she has already made up her mind about something he hasn't. He does not stand a chance.
Told through Krüger's private journal, An Index of Vanishing is a literary alternate-history romance about obsession, longing, and the slow collapse of professional distance—about a man trained to watch, and the girl who watched him back.
Join the review team for An Index of Vanishing. Read it for free before the rest of the world does. Share your honest review. Discover
Bez Reviews Independent Books #18: Even If The Light Forgets Volume 1
[This intro has been updated due to the changes to itch.io’s content guidelines.]
Hey everyone! I wanna do little reviews/writeups for the independently-published books, and so, here I am. I want to review one book every month or two (or quicker, if I’m lucky); it’ll get me reading more, and get authors who often go without feedback some thoughts on their work! I think it’ll be cool for everyone!
I used to require that your books be hosted on itch.io, and while I do prefer that, their crackdown on adult content (which I think is bullshit, and has personally affected my work as well) makes it impossible for many of your stories to have a home there. I would prefer that your book isn’t solely hosted on Amazon, but the only requirement is that no part of your book uses AI at all. I want to see your stories, especially the fucked up shit that places like itch.io will no longer allow!
Feel free to get in touch with me with your books—I’m @NorbezJones on Twitter (I refuse to call it X), Bluesky, Pillowfort, Threads, Instagram, Tumblr, and Discord.
Looking forward to seeing your books! <3
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One more announcement before the review: I am looking for books to review for BPD Awareness Month in May! If you are an author with BPD, especially if you talk about it in your fiction, I would love to hear from you! Readers, feel free to also share recommendations!
With that, onto the review!
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When I asked for books to review for Indie Press Month in March (last month, at the time of writing), I posted the call on my regular social media sites, mainly Twitter, Bluesky, Tumblr, & Pillowfort. As I was putting it up, I decided to throw it on Threads, because I have an account there, so why not? If you don’t know, Threads is Instagram’s version of Twitter, where you post your micro-blogs to a specific topic, and people who see that topic on their feed will see your post. When I put up the call for Indie Press Month, I put it on the topic “bookstagram”; you can see my writeup here.
I was immediately overwhelmed by the response. I got far more replies on Threads than any social media site I put the call for books on—and by a large margin, too. While I wasn’t able to review most of them for my Indie Press Month writeups, I did add a number of them to my reading list to check out in the future.
One of the books I put on my list was Even If The Light Forgets: Volume One by Ys Goldt, a magitech post-apocalypse novel. I was originally drawn to it because of the cover—it was very well-made, but I was a tad worried it could AI, as some of the many responses included work that had used AI (which is why I put in my “no AI” rule when I updated the intro to my BRIB reviews). But after clicking on Goldt’s Tumblr @ysgoldt, I found out that she is a talented artist with an anime/manga-esque style who drew the cover herself! That’s something I admire and find super cool! May human-made art reign forever & ever, amen!
At the time I’m writing this, Even If The Light Forgets: Volume One does not have a public sale page; it is to go up the day I am posting this, around its release day, so links to it will be put in the review after-the-fact. The reason I mention this is because the book therefore doesn’t have a public synopsis at the moment. So, to introduce it, I will be using the synopsis up on the ARC review site I used to obtain it, BookSirens:
In a broken world, the last thing she expects to find is someone who refuses to leave her behind.
Nefra survives by scavenging a broken world and trusting no one. Then she finds something she wasn't supposed to: an artefact, a man who carries it, and the beginning of something she has no name for.
The man is Aurel. Called Half-Made, he is part flesh, part crystal, feared and shunned wherever he goes. He carries an artefact they never meant to find, only something valuable enough to sell.
Nefra's only family is her uncle Enkin, a brilliant, sharp-tongued alchemist whose soul is bound into a doll's body after an experiment went wrong. He didn't expect any of this either.
Nefra tells herself it's all temporary. An alliance. Nothing more. But Aurel watches her as if she is something precious, and the closer they get, the harder it becomes to pretend she doesn't want him to stay.
As a ruthless faction hunts them for the artefact, their path leads them to the woman behind it: Claire. She believes the soul is a myth and consciousness merely a pattern to be uploaded.
Together, these collisions force Nefra, Aurel, and Enkin into a confrontation between grief, faith, and a love neither knows how to name.
Even If the Light Forgets asks what survives when memory fades, and whether being truly seen by another person is enough to make someone whole.
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Perfect for readers who enjoy:
* Slow-burn romance with a real payoff
* Found family forged from misfits
* Wounded, emotionally guarded characters on both sides
* A brutal world that still allows for hope
* Violence treated seriously, not spectacularly
* Literary fantasy with genuine philosophical weight
No explicit sexual content. Features visceral action, moral ambiguity, and deep emotional interiority.
That last paragraph is especially important to take note of. There is romance in this book, with an adorable slow-burn between Nefra & Aurel, but this is not a smut novel; it is a philosophy dialogue wrapped in a fictional shell. And to be clear, I’m not saying that’s a bad thing; I quite like it, but I can see why others may not. More on that will be discussed as we go on.
I received an ARC in exchange for a review. I am not financially sponsored for my opinions, and everything in this review are my honest thoughts.
Before we dive in, it’s important to understand the history of the world we find ourselves in, as explained in the prologue. Here are the basics you need to know:
2000 years prior, humanity started the process called Sublimation, the “transfiguration” of the body into a metallic, crystalized form that did not age, tire, or fall ill. Those who were Sublimated became known as the Numenari. Those who refused this process became known as the Remekhet, “the last unaltered humans”, and they believed that Sublimators were violating natural law with their process, “severing the soul from the natural cycle.” (We learn later that this is because the Remekhet believe in the reincarnation of the soul, but that detail is not shared until way too far into the book.)
These two people tolerated each other. Numenari created technologically-advanced cities, and Remekhet created villages “where memory was carried in living voices rather than machines.” Then, an event known as the Obscuring happened—somehow, the Sublimation failed, and while the way it’s written about in the book itself is not entirely clear (more on that later), we can at least grasp that the Numenari’s technology, including their crystal bodies, failed somehow, and many were wiped out by this strange event.
Cut to 1000 years after the Obscuring, aka our present day. A few of the Numenari’s cities are still around, but many were abandoned or destroyed. The current population of the world (which we aren’t told the name of, if I recall right) is “a fraction of what it once was.” The Numenari who are still around Sublimate still, either by finding people who want to join them, or raising a flesh-and-blood child into the rite (as they are unable to reproduce on their own). The Remekhet trust their own preservation to “stories, rites, and lineage, passing knowledge from generation to generation in ways no archive can . . . [in] blood, land, and living memory.”
The prologue ends thusly:
Some believe the Obscuring was the beginning of a new age; others believe it was a warning; a few believe it never truly stopped; most simply live among what remains.
Whether the world is healing or continuing to decay cannot be said.
What is certain is only this: the engines of the old civilization still hum beneath the earth, signals still answer despite no one calling for them, and memory, whether it survives, rarely remains intact.
Now it’s time to introduce our main characters: Nefra, a Remekhet woman in her 20s, and her uncle, Enkin. Enkin used to be a Remekhet person too, but a lab accident put his soul in the body of a doll. The two of them live in a bunker, and are after an artefact in a “null-zone” (a term never truly defined in the book [again, more on that later]) to sell for supplies. Once they reach it, they find someone else has gotten there first—that’s when Aurel enters the story. Aurel is a failed Sublimation, in that he is half-flesh & half-Numenari, partially crystal but not quite. He lets them have the artefact in exchange for letting him stay with them, because he hasn’t had proper company in quite some time. Nefra & Enkin are wary of him at first, but agree. Thus starts their friendship—and, in the case of Nefra & Aurel, their romance. Little do the three of them know. the artefact they found is more precious than they know, and the leader of a Numenari cult is looking for it as the final puzzle piece for her grand thesis. . .
Even If The Light Forgets: Volume One devoured my free time; I found myself carrying my Kindle outside so I could read it when I had a spare moment or two. I highlighted so many annotations, mostly consisting of lines/parts I liked, they struggle to load on my device. I enjoyed it a great deal, so let’s first talk about the book’s positive qualities!
First off, this is not something I would consider “light reading”, and that is a good thing, at least for me. This is a very interesting book that has a lot to say about humanity & the nature of the soul. The characters are constantly having conversations about it, especially once it’s discovered what the artefact is and the main villain is unveiled. I found this very compelling, and drank in all of it with eager eyes.
The philosophical discussions in the book reminded me of reading Brave New World and coming to the second-to-last chapter. This is when Mustapha Mond, leader of the emotion-numbing dystopia, talks to John, a man raised on a distant reservation who sees value in the pain of life, believing that Mond taking those things way ruins the nature of being human. The two characters are both very intelligent, and seeing their opposing views clash is basically the payoff the entire book has been leading up to. Specifically, the closing lines of their chapter has stuck in my mind since I first read it over ten years ago:
'But I like the inconveniences.'
'We don't,' said the Controller [Mustapha Mund]. 'We prefer to do things comfortably.'
'But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.'
'In fact,' said Mustapha Mond, 'you're claiming the right to be unhappy.'
'All right, then,' said the Savage [John] defiantly, 'I'm claiming the right to be unhappy.'
'Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen to-morrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.'
There was a long silence.
'I claim them all,' said the Savage at last.
Mustapha Mond shrugged his shoulders. 'You're welcome,' he said.
Even If The Light Forgets is trying to have a similar conversation about the nature of being human, asking what it means to truly live. Is living in an immortal, crystal body really life if your memory fails you? Is it better to have a fleshy form whose memory stays, but whose termination ticks closer with every passing day? Is there such thing as a soul, and if there is one, what does that mean for the nature of “humanity”? What can love look like in a dying world; is it still meaningful? All these things and more are brought up in the book.
This reaches its peak with our villain, Claire. She is the leader of a Numenari cult called the Körperlicht*, and as stated in the summary, she does not believe in the soul. As she states to her minion/friend/lover, “There are no gods, Teiran. No soul. Only pattern.” The artefact found by our protagonists is the final piece in her plan, the item that can finally prove her belief that life is only an algorithm that can be manipulated by those who learn its arrays & blueprints.
*After looking it up, it appears Körperlicht is composed of two German words: “körper”, meaning “body”, and “licht”, meaning “light”. Since German isn’t a language in this world (as far as we know), I can’t say it completely makes sense, but we’re just gonna ignore that and continue on.
Our protagonists believe the opposite, that there is significance in life, that it is precious. It’s interesting to see their clashing viewpoints with our villain and her followers; this definitely makes for some interesting moments and fascinating dialogue scenes.
Aurel in particular wrestles with this belief, because as half-Numenari and half-Remekhet. He wonders if, when he dies, his soul will participate in the reincarnation process, or if it will be doomed, as it is said Numenari souls are. He sees himself as “half-made”, an incomplete creation that is not fully flesh, nor fully crystal, the only such person like him in the world. Because of this, he doesn’t believe himself to be fully deserving of love, but falling for Nefra helps disprove that belief.
Speaking of, the slow-burn in this book is, for the most part, fantastically done. I love the descriptions & conversations that occur as it slowly builds up; if it’s not clear already, I really like the dialogue in this book. One moment that stood out to me is when Enkin remarks to Aurel, “Something has shifted. Between you and [Nefra]. She looks calmer. And you . . . you look like you were emptied and then filled with something you can’t name.” it’s very beautifully put!
The dialogue as a whole is pretty great actually, if you are into the kind of philosophical discussion that happens in this book. There’s plenty of wit between the characters, and a lot of meaningful conversation (as previously mentioned).
Finally, I especially like the moments of personification In these pages. There’s a lot of great figurative language, but that in particular is extremely well done. Lines like, “The tablets on the table shivered against one another with a soft staccato,” and, “The herbs in the trench shivered, their leaves quivering,” make the text really shine, and I loved seeing things like it as I read.
Now, for what I didn’t like as much. To start, a small gripe: Enkin starts out not wanting Aurel and Nefra to get together, hostile towards them becoming a couple. Yes, he makes Aurel promise to protect Nefra, but that seems to be more as a safety measure in case he would perish. When it comes to them getting together, sometimes he’s for it, but as the book goes on, he comes across as very much opposed to the idea.
But then, in the final scene Enkin and Aurel have alone together, all his hostility is completely gone. The inconsistency is strange; there’s not even a mention of his previous opposition, just a complete change in attitude. I’m happy he came around, but it does make for an odd moment.
Now, for a bigger concern. The book has a very flowery writing style, full of fancy descriptions and figurative language. Well it does make for a very beautiful piece of text, it is difficult to parse what things mean when the words on the page are talking around something specific. What part of it is figurative and what part is literal? Sometimes it’s hard to say. And when the text is talking around something instead of telling us directly, it’s hard to tell what really happened.
This problem begins in the prologue. When the Obscuring comes up, it is talked about like this:
Whether it began as war, divine judgment, a failure of the sublimation itself, or something stronger remains unknown. What is known is only what followed. Archives degraded into nonsense. Maps ceased to match the land. Entire disciplines vanished as if they had never existed. Some N erased their own memories to remain functional. Many did not survive.
It’s a beautifully written paragraph, but it fails to answer the most important questions the reader would have at this point, such as:
What is the Obscuring, and how did it happen?
Was it a war between Numenari & Remekhet?
Was it some kind of worldwide malfunction of DNA technology and bodies?
What caused many Numenari to die?
The Obscuring is a very important event within this book, but in the moment you are supposed to learn about it, you can only walk away feeling confused.
This problem persists throughout the narrative. It collides with the artistically written dialogue, causing characters to talk around what they mean instead of directly saying it. A good example of this is when our trio learns what the artefact is:
Enkin let out a breath. “Someone tried to leash death,” he said. “Or… to at least tame the path beyond it.”
“Many someones,” Varinon said. “Across years that you and I cannot count, perhaps.
Nefra spoke quietly. “If this lattice was made, then where did it run?”
“If we are to trust the text… everywhere,” Varinon answered quietly. “Or that is what the fragments say. The language turns grand when it fears itself.” He lifted his hand from the alloy sheet. “There were maps, but they do not make much sense. The ink went to dust, and the soul glass kept only the ideas.”
& later:
Varinon obeyed. He moved from piece to piece, his voice a quiet thread tying the fragments together. No single page explained the whole. Each offered a warning, a hint, an old name that had slipped out of use. The picture rose without ever forming: an ancient lattice, a system of nodes that could bind a soul or press it flat, a machine that called itself mercy and yet might be anything but.
Genuinely, what does this mean? The language used makes it hard to parse. I have read this particular section multiple times, but I still come out of it with only a guess as to what the artefact does, not a certainty. While I love the dialogue, especially in its philosophical moments, sometimes I do wish the characters would just speak bluntly about things.
While we are on the topic of language, I will discuss another issue, which is the use of terms related to the world. There are a lot of undefined words related to this universe in this book that aren't really made clear. This starts with the opening chapter, when “ash-lenses” & “warding thread” are mentioned, and continues on throughout the rest of the book. One of the most important terms, soul glass, is never given a clear description; we are left to guess at many aspects of it. I’m not asking the book to pause and give a long paragraph defining every single term, but clarity for the things within the world would be much appreciated.
That is something I also think would have been great for the magic system. Enkin uses wards that he has taught Nefra, and these wards seem to have a wide application, from combat, to repair, to testing. I got the impression that he was drawing these in the air, but we never get a clear description of what these wards are exactly. We just know that they are a thing that our characters do, and a thing that has existed for a long time, as we see wards from the past as well. They’re described quite vaguely beyond that. I hope the next book will clarify the magic system much more, because it's an interesting idea that it's never fully given space to spread its wings.
I hope listing my criticism does not give the impression that I hated Even If The Light Forgets: Volume One—quite the opposite, in fact. I loved it, would happily read it again (which I can’t say for every book I read), and do recommend you pick it up for yourself. However, I cannot ignore the cracks in this text’s foundation. Thankfully, this is the first in a series, and future volumes can fix these problems.
Overall, I must say Even If The Light Forgets: Volume One is the perfect book for me. I love texts that ponder the nature of human life, and this is a story that provides that in spades. It has a beautiful writing style and lovely dialogue that I, aside from the pain points listed, found pleasant. The epilogue left me super curious as to what will happen next, and I can’t wait to see what occurs in the 2nd volume.
If you’re curious about the book and want to read it for yourself, you can do so here! I am not sponsored and do not make any money from your purchase. If you have Kindle Unlimited, it’s a free read, and other wise, it’s $2.99 for the ebook, which I think is a steal for such an amazing tome.
Thank you for reading! I have at least one more review planned for this month, if time is willing. Until next time!
Today, March 21st, is my character Adiel's birthday. He is a love interest (LI) from my game Romance The Backrooms. All the LIs are based on an emotion, and he is based around surprise!
Leader of the Backrooms Brotherhood, Adiel is on a mission to escape the backrooms with the guys he cares about. Then, you come along, putting a detour in his plans--he can't ignore when a person needs help, so he's determined to get you back to Earth in no time. As he does so, your feelings become entangled, and a friendship blossoms--could it be something more?
I mentioned it's also Glarence's day! He's the LI based on anger, a grump who at first doesn't want to help you get home, but grows to love you over time. His birthday is on February 29th, so it only occurs every Leap Year. On non-Leap Years (like this one), Adiel shares his birthday with Glarence so Mr. Grumpy can have a special day. Glarence pretends he doesn't care, but really, he's very grateful. 💚
If you want to check out Romance The Backrooms, you can play it here! There's even a special game for Glarence & Adiel called "The Backrooms Is In The Eye Of The Beholder". For more of their interactions, check out the "gladiel" tag. I have over 100 pages of side stories under the "romancethebackrooms" tag too!
Thanks for celebrating my boys' birthdays with me! We're currently working on revamping the Romance The Backrooms demo, so please look forward to the new version later this year!
P.S. I was determined to actually draw this whole thing myself, and not use stock images. I think the roses in the background turned out ok. It's roses because Adiel's birthday is on National Flower Day (the date suggestion was made by his VA, Khai Troung, for that reason!). Glarence gets black roses, and Adiel gets white ones.
I think it lets those pass who have lost all hope. Not good or bad, but wretched people. But even the most wretched will die if they don't know how to behave. You have been lucky, it just warned you. - From Stalker film by Tarkovsky
More Irina
Romance The Backrooms' Voice Acting Update Is LIVE!!!
RtB is now at Version 1.0, and the voice acting is now in the game! PLEASE give it a play, even if you've already seen the game before; the voice acting adds so much to it, and everyone really poured their heart into their performances.
As usual, let me know if there are any errors that need to be fixed, and please fill out the feedback form so I can hear thoughts! That's very important to me.
Also, in case you missed it, I have A TON of RtB content on my blogs! Here's a Tumblr link, and here's a Pillowfort link. There's short stories, character prompts, behind-the-scenes posts, and more. Lots of stuff!
Info on the game:
Romance The Backrooms is a F/M dating sim VN about Carla, a daycare worker who falls into the titular liminal space by pure chance. Thankfully, she meets a group of 5 humanoid entities who are willing to help her get back home. On the way, Carla, who’s had no time for love because of her work, finds herself becoming smitten with one of the entities. Will she get out of the backrooms with her love intact?
This is the player character:
(More on Carla)
And these are the love interests!
(More on Kalcal)
(More on Glarence)
(More on Uri)
(More on Zenobos)
(More on Adiel)
RtB is a HUGE passion project of mine, and I'm so happy to have the voice acting update implemented now! The game also features character designs by a bunch of amazing people--please be sure to read the credits and visit them all!
If you play it, please rate the game and leave a comment--it really helps. Enjoy, and I look forward to your thoughts! Be sure to fill out the feedback form to make your opinions heard! P.S. Go here if you want to make your own Memory Collector: https://toyhou.se/18790296.open-species-entity-313
rough sketch of some new OCs!
Lucius Aelius Marinus, a reserved Roman engineer from Baetica, comes to Cleopatra’s Alexandria to fix the harbour pipes and then return home. Instead, he meets Meryt-Amun, an Egyptian court musician whose voice can charm a palace and who speaks to him with an ease no other woman ever has.
As their chance encounters become deliberate meetings along the sea’s edge, friendship grows into something neither of them quite knows how to name.
But in a city where empires trade, collide, and depart with the tide, even the gentlest love may be asked to choose between duty and the impossible hope of staying.
Otto and Margarete von Eisenhof
A bit of info about them:
Margarete 'Grete':
Sister to Otto; too indulged to be properly obedient, too clever to be dismissed as frivolous.
Grete has a restless, mercurial energy that makes her difficult to pin down. She moves quickly, laughs easily, and shifts tone without warning, from teasing to perceptive to unsettlingly earnest. Adults often mistake this for immaturity; those who spend time with her realise it is closer to curiosity without a filter.
She has little patience for reverence. Great men, great works, great tragedies are treated as things to be examined, prodded, and occasionally laughed at. She speaks of the great poet Größel as “just a man” and means it. Authority does not impress her unless it earns her interest.
Her manners are technically correct, but she deploys them selectively. She curtsies with exaggerated sweetness when it amuses her, ignores protocol when it does not, and treats rank as a game she knows the rules of but does not fully respect. She is especially fond of unsettling solemn people by being cheerful at inappropriate moments.
Grete collects stories the way others collect specimens. She is drawn to damaged, intense, or socially marginalised figures, not out of pity but out of fascination. She asks questions that are too direct, offers companionship too casually, and does not always recognise when she is being intrusive. Rejection rarely embarrasses her; it only makes her more curious.
Quote:
"I write fairy stories! Perhaps I shall show you sometime…"
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Otto:
A man shaped by duty, softened almost exclusively by his sister Grete.
Otto presents as composed, courteous, and impeccably controlled. He speaks little when he can speak precisely, and listens more than he reveals. Among peers, he is reserved rather than warm, measured rather than charismatic, a baron whose authority rests on quiet inevitability rather than force of personality.
Personally austere, Otto has little interest in ornament, fashion, or sentimentality. He dresses plainly for his rank, prefers functionality, and avoids displays that might draw attention. The bow at his collar is an exception: a small, conspicuous indulgence given by Grete, worn despite private embarrassment. He treats it not as decoration but as a token, and will defend it with surprising firmness.
Quote:
"If the choice is between propriety and my sister's displeasure, propriety may learn to endure disappointment."
