This novella was frustrating, because the first half was ultimately just a completely unnecessary retreading of scenes we already saw in The New Prophecy, just from Mothwing's POV. What was interesting, though, was getting to witness first-hand her beliefs being challenged after the battle with the Dark Forest; a confrontation that was much-needed, in my opinion, given how nonsensical atheism in this universe is.

3/5.

Another complete nothing of a novella, unfortunately, not to mention a character assassination for Mistystar. Would the cat who kept quiet about Silverstream and Graystripe and was nearly murdered for her half-Clan birth really treat Mothwing in such a way? This really just didn't need to exist.

1.5/5.

My favourite of the Booker longlist that I've read so far, but I still didn't love it.

Black Bag's premise does a lot of heavy lifting. Our unnamed narrator, a down-on-his-luck actor in his late 30s looking for work, is offered a "role" by a psychology professor: walk around campus and sit in on classes, all while staying silent and wearing a black leather bag.

As an ex-student of psychology I was already familiar with the original black bag experiment and the mere exposure effect, so I went into this worried that a lot of what it was exploring would feel predictable. This ended up being the case to a degree, but the short chapters along with the wacky concept and narrative voice made Black Bag a shockingly propulsive read. A book this simple is often unpredictable, and that ended up being true on occasion.

The novel's biggest failing, though, is in its repetitiveness. It's simply too long for what it is. We're treated to similar permutations of the same events on repeat for the majority of the book, with our narrator gleaning only slightly different things about himself and society each time. A tighter focus was needed here; there's only so many times I can read about the narrator's slowly deepening musings on late stage capitalism and gender performance before I start getting bored and frustrated.

Another issue I had, and this is mostly personal taste, is none of these characters spoke or felt like real people. I know this is the point, it's literally a satirical novel, but I hate being reminded that I'm reading a book that is trying to deliver a message when I'm reading fiction. When your characters feel like mouthpieces for specific ideas rather than people with motivations and opinions, you start to lose me.

Despite the issues I had, though, I still found Black Bag to be an enjoyable read. It has some interesting things to say about the commodification of art and the allure of anonymity in today's world, even if this exploration never went quite as deep as I wanted it to. It's often funny, and it had some twists and turns that I wasn't expecting. This is the best time I've had reading a novel from the longlist so far, and I won't be mad if this one makes the shortlist!

3.25/5.