A review by cesspool_princess
The Heads of Cerberus by Francis Stevens

3.0

I feel bad giving this a 3 bc I think a lot of the things I didn't like as much about it are not the book's fault. I'm just so fatigued of time travel narratives and parallel timeline narratives and the construction of the world felt very YA dystopian sci fi, but then I have to remember that this book was written in like 1916 and predates allllll of those associations and the thing is, it does have a lot going for it. The main characters are all very likeable, charming, soulful, a bit archetypal but in a fun satisfying way. The description of Ulithia was by far my favorite part, the most intriguing and exciting part, which makes me rly want to read Stevens's fantasy as opposed to the sci-fi, I'm also admittedly in a major fantasy zone and don't want sci fi right now which its my fault for reading this (its so funny how the genres are in some ways so similar but yet to me FEEL so so different, like the kind of immersion feels so different to me and I don't know why). I almost gave this 4 stars purely bc of how the explained everything in the end, I was glad it ended up not being an actual prediction of the future but rather the projection of the characters, their values and personalities. The explanation merged science and the occult in a very satisfying way instead of going the pure science route which I always dread (where is the mystery, the mystique, maybe thats why I like fantasy so much more, magic and mysticism is able to be so satisfyingly opaque, even when we know how it works, its essence is still mysterious while speculative science, futurism, while it may not explain its inner workings to you, it is always implied that those inner working are there and are based on something logical and ultimately knowable). I will also say, the way she predicted communism would be used as a scapegoat on the part of the elite to unilaterally seize insane amounts of power ended up being spot on.