REVIEW: 'TRANSCENDENCE' BY SHAY SAVAGE

REVIEW: 'TRANSCENDENCE' BY SHAY SAVAGE

This book came up as a recommendation on my Goodreads and after reading the synopsis and seeing how highly rated it was I decided to pick it up. In hindsight, I am utterly baffled about how this book earned its 4+ star rating. I understand it probably as much as Ehd understands why he can’t put a baby in Beh (Side note: he doesn’t!)


To be completely honest, the whole thing went rolling swiftly downhill pretty much from the second I opened it up and read the author’s note where Shay Savage tries to scientifically explain why Ehd can not and will not ever be able to understand or speak any sort of language. I want to apologise to myself for not immediately acknowledging this for the huge red flag that it is and still giving this book a chance. 


Let me give you a brief overview. The story opens with our male protagonist Ehd trying to herd animals into the pit trap he made, trying to survive in isolation after a fire killed his entire tribe. Once successful in this, he heads back to his cave, accidentally leaving his weapon by the pit. When he goes back to retrieve it, low and behold a woman wearing strange clothing and making a lot of noise has been trapped in the pit. Said woman is Beh, from the future. Of course, since Ehd can’t understand a single thing that is going on or what she is saying, he immediately labels her as his ‘mate’ and spends the rest of the book desperately trying to ‘put a baby in her’. 


That’s it. That’s the plot. 


The words ‘put a baby in her’ were repeated so many times by the midpoint I wouldn’t have said no to stabbing myself with the primitive hairbrush Ehd made for Beh. The whole thing is basically just the synopsis repeated over and over and over again for 300+ pages.


Beh is, to say the least, highly irritating. All she does is cry and scream, and girl doesn’t make ONE SINGLE ATTEMPT to get back to her own time or even figure out how she time travelled in the first place. Call me crazy, but if I found myself in a situation where I was magically transported to the fucking Stone Age I’d probably try and do a little more to get myself back to the word of flushing toilets and toothpaste before assuming my role as Wilma Flinstone.


To be fair to Beh (if I absolutely must), we never find out how she feels or what she thinks about any of it throughout because the entire book is told in Ehd’s POV. You heard me right. The guy who is not and will not ever be able to speak or understand language beyond basic grunts and guttural sounds tells the whole ass book IN FIRST PERSON AND PRESENT TENSE. 


I have read a few reviews that say Ehd is an ‘alpha male’ and, let me just tell you, Beh bathes him, brushes his teeth, scolds him…at one point when he does something she doesn’t like she literally slaps his nose like a naughty puppy and every time she says ‘no’ he cries and scuttles away into a corner and keeps his head down like fucking Gollum until she lets him touch her again. 

My brain cells felt like they are diving one by one into a pool of acid and each dying a slow and painful death as I was reading this. I just do not understand.