Saving Ellipsis

English language

Published Aug. 1, 2023 by Rivka Publishing.

ISBN:: 978-2-493897-11-4

No rating (1 review)

In Ellipsis, a small and quiet town lying quite literally between the lines of a manuscript, life revolves around the Text. Every day, letters and punctuation marks are scrubbed, polished, and patched up to preserve the words the Author wrote – and abandoned – many years ago.

Unlike her fellow townspeople and their passion for all things literature, Prosperina Dash has embraced a career as a florist. But when she discovers a dead body at her shop and the foundations of Ellipsis start crumbling away for no apparent reason, she sets off to The Capital in a desperate attempt to save her town from collapsing.

Together with a Text-diving champion, a snobbish man who Capitalises Every Word, and a cufflink-eating flower, Prosperina finds herself entangled in a web of long-held secrets with an unknown killer in the centre of it.

2 editions

lastblossom reviewed Saving Ellipsis by Laure Dargelos

A fun book for lovers of books that plays with layouts, grammar, and a unique world to build a fun mystery.

No rating

I didn't know what to expect when going into this book, and I found myself surprised to find the illustrations drop a corpse literally into the text. Turns out, the book plays with layout a lot - not just illustrations, but text as well. As a book about books, it has a very meta playful self-awareness, and I especially liked all the interesting ways the layout and formatting were used to tell the story. A series of grammatical jokes and a few friendly jabs at every writer's first (iffy) attempts cap this off as a book definitely aimed at fans of books. The two leads are fun enough, but the standout character winds up being an enthusiastic and hungry flower named Eloise, who I adored in every scene. World building is unique and fairly vast, and can run a little long at times just to get all the names and …

I didn't know what to expect when going into this book, and I found myself surprised to find the illustrations drop a corpse literally into the text. Turns out, the book plays with layout a lot - not just illustrations, but text as well. As a book about books, it has a very meta playful self-awareness, and I especially liked all the interesting ways the layout and formatting were used to tell the story. A series of grammatical jokes and a few friendly jabs at every writer's first (iffy) attempts cap this off as a book definitely aimed at fans of books. The two leads are fun enough, but the standout character winds up being an enthusiastic and hungry flower named Eloise, who I adored in every scene. World building is unique and fairly vast, and can run a little long at times just to get all the names and places in. The first part of the book moves a little slowly because of this, but it picks up in the second half, and all the lore drops fit together really well for the solution to the mystery.

This book was originally written in French, and this review covers the English translation by Rivka publishing. Serious props to the translation team. Translating a book made up of grammar jokes into a different language cannot be easy! Names of people and places have been altered slightly (sometimes for pronunciation, other times to adjust the meaning to make sense in English), and there were a few times where the world building in particular got a little hard to wade through, but the overall experience was a very smooth read. They've noted that this book is the first in their line of French-to-English releases, and I wish them well, because I enjoyed this one.

Thanks to NetGalley and Rivka Publishing for an advance copy! All thoughts in this review are my own.