The ideal way to read “Plastic, Prism, Void: Part One” is in as close to one sitting as possible so the time slips, style changes and format jumps that make it such an exciting book bleed through the shifting, confusing perspectives of a tiring brain to create an intellectual space open to new, weird and exciting ideas. Driven by the charismatic voice of the narrator, the wild magic, the even wilder science, the will-they-won’t-they-have-they between the protagonists, the potential for a wedding and the buildup to a truly surprising climax, you’ll probably just want to blast through it.
There are so many different genres flying around in the book that part of its fun is coming up with the best quick description of it. The publisher goes with “Combining Sailor Moon, ‘Sex and the City’ and ‘House of Leaves,’” but I like “fae English major Doctor Who trying to sort out her feelings for a Gundam pilot and making it everyone else’s problem.”
Acrasia, sometimes Phalene, is a Black, straight, transfemme moth goddess with a range of magical powers. Opus, sometimes Trio, is an Asian American, straight, transmasc cyborg who pilots a giant tiger robot. They might be perfect for each other, except they live in different realities that only occasionally overlap. In her world, Acrasia navigates the demands of her powers and her shifting – sometimes contradictory – personal desires through the conflict-ridden community of her moth-goddess sisters and the wider world that must endure (and occasionally enjoy) their creations. In his world, Opus is fighting a war with a powerful alien species, a war with his older brother and a war against the grief and memory of his father. Bringing their worlds together could solve many of their problems. Or it could destroy the entire universe.
If you need to like a narrator to enjoy a book, “Plastic, Prism, Void” might be a tough read. Acrasia is that perfect mix of vulnerable and arrogant that makes for a consistent cascade of dramatic events but can be exhausting to deal with. There will be times when you’ll want to shout, “Just chill out! People like you! I like you!” at her.
Of course, as readers, we don’t really need to “deal with” Acrasia. Our inherent detachment from her allows us to consider her actions from a range of different perspectives. Furthermore, I think Allen is exploring important emotional territory around the pressure to be excellent and create excellence that all of us face in some parts of our lives, but that fall much harder on minoritized and marginalized communities. Status as moth goddess aside, being mediocre means something different to a white guy like me than it does to someone such as Acrasia.
One could certainly just buckle up for the ride that is “Plastic, Prism, Void: Part One.” Part of the joy of the book is seeing what Allen comes up with next. Encountering the “mirror dimension” for the first time and learning that voice would narrate some of the backstory made me gasp with delight. Allen uses a number of different text layouts on the page to great effect, sometimes shocking, sometimes hilarious, always just over the top enough to elicit a reaction. But I think there is a depth beneath the pyrotechnics worth exploring.
Acrasia is also a poet, and an opinionated one at that, so the book is filled with references, citations, ideas and theories. Allen, through Acrasia’s desire to be taken seriously (see above), complicates, or at least questions, the powers of literature, while critiquing literary posturing. But there are also passages that invite the reader to write in the book – space left on the physical page for you to answer the questions Acrasia poses. At one point, she even asks us to tear out some pages (which I couldn’t bring myself to do), so it is clear Allen has given us more than an escape in her text. She is asking us to engage.
Ultimately, how you read and enjoy “Plastic, Prism, Void: Part One” is up to you. Like the works of Victor Lavalle, Allen’s wild genre tornado of a novel will support many different readings on many different levels, satisfying, thrilling and perplexing many different readers. I can’t wait for Part Two.
Josh Cook is a bookseller and co-owner at Porter Square Books in Cambridge, where he has worked since 2004. He is also author of the critically acclaimed postmodern detective novel “An Exaggerated Murder” and “The Art of Libromancy: On Selling Books and Reading Books in the 21st Century.” He has self-published the zine For White Dudes (Like Me) Who Have Not Considered Reading Trans Books. His fiction, criticism and poetry have appeared in numerous leading literary publications. He grew up in Lewiston, Maine, and lives in Somerville. If you’d like to read more about books, subscribe to his newsletter Yesterday Today Tomorrow Forever.
A version of this story appeared originally on the Porter Square Review of Books. Purchase “Plastic, Prism, Void: Part One” from Porter Square Books.
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