Review: Obscura Burning by Suzanne van Rooyen

Obscura Burning
by Suzanne van Rooyen
Published by Etiopia Press
Paperback (bought)
YA, LGBT, sci-fi

The world's going to end in fire...and it's all Kyle's fault.

Kyle Wolfe's world is about to crash and burn. Just weeks away from graduation, a fire kills Kyle's two best friends and leaves him permanently scarred. A fire that Kyle accidentally set the night he cheated on his boyfriend Danny with their female friend, Shira. That same day, a strange new planet, Obscura, appears in the sky. And suddenly Kyle's friends aren't all that dead anymore.

Each time Kyle goes to sleep, he awakens to two different realities. In one, his boyfriend Danny is still alive, but Shira is dead. In the other, it's Shira who's alive...and now they're friends with benefits. Shifting between realities is slowly killing him, and he's not the only one dying. The world is dying with him. He's pretty sure Obscura has something to do with it, but with his parents' marriage imploding and realities shifting each time he closes his eyes, Kyle has problems enough without being the one in charge of saving the world.

Over a week after reading Obscura Burning and hundreds of discussions with a friend and in my head I'm still not sure what to say. Did I love it? Absolutely. Did it confuse me? Yes, a little bit. Did it leave me gasping for breath? Without any doubt.

 

Obscura Burning is mind-blowing, stunning, breathtaking, unique, confusing, hopeless but still wishful. It was everything at once, and I was mesmerized by every word, twist and turn. At times (read: almost always) Obscura Burning was straight-forward, a little bit rude with language and one thing that I'm happy about: shameless. Van Rooyen made her characters say and think things like they are - there was no word playing and twisting things into something they weren't. Sex was sex, drunk was drunk and everything between sky and earth was like it was meant to be. It's a blessing on a YA genre where, especially on American books, things like sex are hidden behind everything and only hinted towards. Obscura Burning aren't for those who lives in a bubble or tries to shelter someone from the cruel world.

 

What makes Obscura Burning so good, so fresh, is the characters that have many layers. Especially Kyle kept surprising me all the time, and I loved it. Van Rooyen's characters are real, brutal, harsh, grievous and multifaceted. No one was perfect, every one of them had handful of flaws and sorrows but there still was a little bit hope, a tiny wish that maybe everything will be allright at the end.

 

A cripping story of hard choices, consequences of every choice made and quilt that won't disappear. It's also a different kind of story about friendship, family and how things aren't always so good. Obscura Burning is, without doubts, story about life that's real; so real you can feel the earth crumbling beneath your feet.

 

 5 of 5 stars and everything else I can give.

Obscura Burning on Goodreads.