Description
Nominated for 2024 Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association’s Elgin Award • One of the Globe 100’s Best Books of 2023
The follow-up to Guriel’s NYT New & Noteworthy Forgotten Work is a mashup of Moby-Dick, The Lord of the Rings, Byron, cyberpunk, Swamp Thing, Teen Wolf … and more.
It’s 2070. Newfoundland has vanished, Tokyo is a new Venice, and many people have retreated to “bonsai housing”: hives that compress matter in a world that’s losing ground to rising tides. Enter Kaye, an English literature student searching for the reclusive author of a YA classic—a beloved novel about teenage werewolves sailing to a fabled sea monster’s nest. Kaye’s quest will intersect with obsessive fan subcultures, corporate conspiracies, flying gondolas, an anthropomorphic stove, and the molecular limits of reality itself. Set in the same world as Guriel’s acclaimed Forgotten Work, which the New York Times called “unlikely, audacious, and ingenious,” and written in rhyming couplets, The Full-Moon Whaling Chronicles cuts between Kaye’s quest, chapters from the YA novel, and guerilla works of fanfic in a visionary verse novel destined to draw its own cult following.
Praise for The Full-Moon Whaling Chronicles
“The first thing to know about Guriel’s 2023 book is that it’s a novel written in rhyming couplets. The second is that it’s about whalers who are also werewolves. Guriel has completely nailed his own ambitious brief; it’s imaginative, innovative and unlike anything else published this year.”
—Globe and Mail
“Author Jason Guriel’s new work focuses on entertaining people, he sees his verse novels as a form of poetry that might reach outside the insular culture of poets and engage more general readers.”
—Globe and Mail
“Jason Guriel is a Canadian poet of gobsmacking originality. Three years ago, he published Forgotten Work, a futuristic novel about fans searching for an early 21st-century rock band . . . Guriel’s new verse novel is, if anything, even more bizarre and delightful.”
—The Washington Post
“Without question this is the most imaginative piece of young-adult-adjacent fiction I have ever read. It’s a big wolfy huff-and-puff of fresh air in a genre swamped with tired plots and love triangles.”
—Wall Street Journal
“Holy hell! What a book, what a story, what a poem!”
—Ron Charles, book critic at The Washington Post
“Guriel is plainly a talented versifier. Silly, unabashedly committed to charming their audience, his novels are works of whimsy.”
—Literary Review of Canada
“[T]he book that’s going to get under your skin this summer . . . dizzyingly interesting . . . there is something utterly new and exciting here.”
—Toronto Star
“The Full-Moon Whaling Chronicles is a deeply original outing. Gorgeously-written, it is a testament to beauty and wonder.”
—Tara Henley, Lean Out
“Every so often, you get to read something that is so unique, so imaginative in structure and story, that you’re simply blown away . . . This novel? Epic poem? Legend? Is so brilliant that it rises to the top of what has been a very excellent streak in reading—I’ve read a lot of outstanding books both before and after The Full-Moon Whaling Chronicles, but none so singularly innovative in their storytelling.”
—The Miramichi Reader
“Jason Guriel returns with a bonkers adventure story of werewolf whalers and cult YA authors so immersive you forget the damn thing unfolds in flawless rhyme. Sold as a follow-up to Forgotten Work, it is in fact a freestanding lark of genius. No clue what verse genre Jason Guriel is creating here, but we are all under its shadow now.”
—Carmine Starnino, author of Dirty Words
“If you think today’s world is whacky, get a load of Guriel’s newest report on the future! Written in verse (what?!?) and full of just about every kind of character imagineable, this is the stuff that fan cults are made of. Whether it’s your thing or you just want to dip a toe in the water to see what all the fuss is about, give it a try. People fall in love for their own strange, personal reasons. It might just happen to you, too! Hey!, what happened to Newfoundland?”
—Linda, Auntie’s Bookstore
“This gutsy novel is a mash-up of Moby-Dick, The Twilight series, Alice in Wonderland, and cli-fi, all told in the form of an epic poem. With a character roster that boasts werewolf whalers, genetic mutants, and talking stoves, it is a wild ride. The rhyming couplets and story-within-a-story plot lines will keep readers’ heads spinning. While the book inhabits the same world as Guriel’s 2020 Forgotten Work, it can be read as a standalone. For those who like their sci-fi epic and adventurous, yet laced with snarky humor, this is your book.”
—Grace, Mac’s Back Books
“There is no reason to believe this absurd concoction will work, but it does, rewarding readers with an inventive narrative, gorgeous wordplay, and a healthy dose of humor throughout.”
—Shelf Awareness
“A story with heart, intrigue, and mystery . . . Lovers of science fiction will find this unlike anything they’ve read before.”
—Booklist
“The author’s playful disposition and quixotic milieu remain infectious.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Playful and genre-agnostic.”
—Quill and Quire
Praise for Forgotten Work
“A futuristic dystopian rock novel in rhymed couplets, this rollicking book is as unlikely, audacious and ingenious as the premise suggests.”
—New York Times
“A wondrous novel.”
—Ron Charles, Washington Post
“What do you get when you throw John Shade, Nick Drake, Don Juan, Sarah Records, and Philip K. Dick into a rhymed couplet machine? Equal parts memory and forgetting, detritus and elegy, imagination and fancy, Forgotten Work could be the most singular novel-in-verse since Vikram Seth’s The Golden Gate. Thanks to Jason Guriel’s dexterity in metaphor-making, I found myself stopping and rereading every five lines or so, to affirm my surprise and delight.”
—Stephen Metcalf
“This book has no business being as good as it is. Heroic couplets in the twenty-first century? It’s not a promising idea, but Forgotten Work is intelligent, fluent, funny, and wholly original. I can’t believe it exists.”
—Christian Wiman
