Derek's Reviews > The Incrementalists

To begin, it's told from alternating viewpoints: Phil (I'm betting written primarily by Steven Brust) and Ren (Renée - presumably written by Skyler White). I'm a simple sort, and easily confused, so despite the fact that every section is headed by the name of the first-person character, I fairly often got a page into a change of viewpoint before realizing that I was thinking I was reading Phil when it was actually Ren.

Then, I like the basic premises of a story to be explained to me. I don't need it all up front, but by the time I get to the end, I want to be able to have understood what was going on. In this story, we have the titular Incrementalists, and the 'nemones' (or confusingly, the amnemones), who are every human who isn't an Incrementalist. But we never get an explanation, or even a guess, as to why the Incrementalists are different from other humans. My personal suspicion is that, in fact, Incrementalists are not remotely human; that they're a pure-energy lifeform which lives in symbiosis with humanity. However, the Incrementalists themselves are remarkably uninquisitive about their own origins, so your guess is as good as mine. My guess, though, would help to explain Celeste.

So we come to Celeste. Ren has been selected to be the new 'host' (Incrementalists call her a Second: another problem—so many words that have special meaning to Incrementalists are never explained, you have to work them out for yourself) for the deceased Celeste's memories. Celeste somehow seems to be manipulating Ren, Phil and others from beyond the grave, and we're never really given a hint how that could be possible (and at least one Incrementalist flat-out says that it isn't possible!)