SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Signal to Noise by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Signal to Noise by Silvia Moreno-Garcia https://t.co/gw1U1CrSSR Short Review: 9 out of 10 (1/3)

— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) July 15, 2019

Short Review (cont): A fantasy tale of two timelines of a girl named Meche who once dabbled with magic and music with her two closest friends as a teen in Mexico City & what she finds when she returns 20 years later is so great with its characters and their relationship. (2/3)

— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) July 16, 2019

The work of Silvia Moreno-Garcia has really gotten my attention over the past year, with several of her novels becoming quick favorites of mine.  I got an advance copy of Gods of Jade and Shadow and loved it (my review here), and that novel was the third work of hers that I'd read with just fantastic characters and relationships.  So having finished that novel, I quickly looked for anything else by her that I hadn't read in my library's ebook collection, and lo and behold, there was Signal to Noise, her debut novel.

And Signal to Noise is excellent - a story broken up into two time periods  in Mexico City, following two characters as magic changes their relationship in the past and as they meet once again after years apart in the present.  Once again, this book features prominently the relationship between a pair (and to a point, a trio) of characters, whose feelings for each other are apparent to the reader but not to them.  And while that could be annoying if written poorly, Moreno-Garcia writes them perfectly, as the annoying teens, and then the grown adults, that they are, so that everything makes sense, and it works pretty fantastically.  Oh and did I mention the magic based upon music?

Yeah, this one's pretty great in the end.


-------------------------------------------------Plot Summary--------------------------------------------------------
Mexico City, 1988-1989:  High School Teens Meche, Sebastian and Daniela are outcasts from the school, though they each wish to be more.  The trio are very different, yet are very attached to each other all the same.  Meche's dad has taught her to be obsessed with music and his records, and one day her music seems to have magical effects, so Meche and Sebastian, along with Daniela, decide to try and explore this magic.  But as their lives continue to unfold, and their desires and families change around them, the potential of magic poses the risk of tearing them apart.

Mexico City, 2009: For the first time in years, Meche returns to Mexico City for her father's funeral - a father she didn't talk to for the last 20 years.  In fact, Meche hasn't talked to Sebastian either since 1989, and hopes he will not be in town.  But luck is not with her, and Sebastian has returned to town, and their reunion cannot be avoided.  What is left of their relationship?  And what happened back then to tear them apart, and what did it do to their lives in the interim?
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Signal to Noise is split between chapters taking place in 2009 and the 1988-1989 year, with the story alternating between the time periods.  The bulk of the story is really within the 1988-1989 time period, and the 2009 time period serves in large part to foreshadow what happened back then and to give a feeling of dread.  Yet in the end, the 2009 storyline evolves into a satisfying and perfect conclusion to the past storyline, and to a really great ending of this book.

But what makes this book work are our two main characters: Meche and Sebastian.  Meche is our primary character and the story is largely told from her perspective, but Sebastian's POV also gets major moments, as do some other characters (Meche's father) to a lesser extent in the past storyline - the present storyline is told entirely from Meche's point of view.  And Meche and Sebastian are tremendous, a pair of oddball teens whose relationship is strong as could be but subject to the usual teen growing pains, who are too used to each other and to handicapped in their own ways of expressing their own feelings to really realize what the other means for each other.  From the outside, as the reader, how the two really feel about each other is obvious, but it makes so much sense how neither of them realize it, and their actions as a result are natural....but often made me cringe from the discomfort they were causing each other (other people may find this less affecting, but these plots always make me wince, not that that's a bad thing - it just means I care).  The future version of Meche is also believable even if we spend less time with her and works quite as well.

The rest of the characters are also very solid, from Meche and Sebastian's third wheel Daniela to Meche's parents to the other kids at school.  It all forms a setting that backgrounds the main duo's feelings for one another in a really strong way and I'm going to poorly describe this if I try any further.  If I have any complaints about this book, it's that the magic discovered by the characters moves from being in the "maybe real, maybe not real" to incredibly powerful and real really really quickly, and it's a jump that didn't quite work for me.  Still, the magic is clearly not nearly as important as the characters' relationship, so it's not a huge deal, and the journey and ending is so damn satisfying that I loved this book besides this.

This is far from my longest reviews, because describing a book that's so much about a relationship in a way that doesn't spoil things is kind of hard.  But just know that Signal to Noise is excellent and well worth your time, just like the rest of Silvia Moreno-Garcia's works.  So recommended.