The Phoenix Pencil Company seems to have gotten more hype in general fiction circles than speculative fiction ones, but author Allison King caught my eye with her interview in Clarkesworld, and given my recent fascination with stories that play with memory and family, it moved up my TBR quickly.
The Phoenix Pencil Company is essentially told via diary entries, whether electronic, handwritten, or magically recorded, split primarily between two perspective characters. One is a contemporary computer science student, working with a professor to code an app that connects people based on common interests expressed in social media posts and diary entries. The other is her grandmother, who had worked alongside her mother, aunt, and cousin at a magical pencil factory during World War Two before immigrating to Taiwan and eventually America. When the app puts one of the leads in contact with another university student who had met her grandmother’s cousin, it triggers frantic remembering on the part of her grandmother and a bit of romance on her own part, with both stories heavily seasoned with difficult questions about the ethics of privacy and preservation.
Like with so many two-timeline stories, there’s one that makes for easier immersion than the other. They’re both well-written, and neither is especially challenging to read, but at least for an American reader who grew up with a lot of technology, it’s easy to relate to the concerns of the younger, highly online protagonist. The grandmother’s story, on the other hand, tends to introduce a bit of emotional distance. This may just be a matter of character—a woman from a different generation and culture, and one who has plenty of regrets, is simply less comfortable opening her heart on the page—but it makes for a story that’s a bit less gripping, even as it wends through objectively harrowing circumstances.
If the past timeline is a story of estrangement, the present is one of family and romance, in that order. The sapphic storyline is fun and endearing, but it’s the relationship between granddaughter and grandparents that really steals the show here. The drama all comes in from elsewhere, allowing the central relationship to be unerringly wholesome. It’s a true joy to read, and while the whole novel is certainly not cozy, I imagine that the relationships at the center of the contemporary storyline will appeal to fans of cozy fantasy.
Both timelines are intensely concerned with data privacy, as both magic pencils and contemporary apps have plenty of potential to expose data to unwanted viewers. The book makes good cases for both the benefits and the harms of data recording, but ultimately, it creates a couple of neat villains that make for simple conclusions, not really really doing justice to the complexities on offer.
On the whole, The Phoenix Pencil Company is a well-written and engaging novel with endearing relationships and a lot to say about data preservation and privacy. That said, the war storyline isn’t half as harrowing as it had potential to be, and the ending loses a bit of the complexity that had characterized the novel up to that point. Still, while it may leave some potential on the table, it’s a compelling and interesting tale that still has plenty to offer.
Recommended if you like: ethical questions about data privacy, heartwarming familiar relationships.
Can I use it for Bingo? It’s hard mode for Published in 2025, LGBTQIA+ Protagonist, Epistolary, and Stranger in a Strange Land. It also is written by a POC Author.
Overall rating: 15 of Tar Vol’s 20. Four stars on Goodreads.