The Subtle Art of Folding Space is the debut novel of award-winning short fiction writer John Chu. An expansion of Chu’s short story “Hold-Time Violations” (2015), Subtle Art follows Ellie, a physicist who moonlights as one of the builders who maintains the physics of the universe.

Ellie was trained by her mother in how to repair the skunkworks, the complex machinery that lives outside the universe and dictates how it functions. Now that Ellie’s mother is comatose, she has inherited her responsibilities as one of the maintainers of the universe’s laws. However, when Ellie goes to investigate an inconsistency, she finds that someone has tampered with the skunkworks in order to keep her mother alive. She dismantles the machinery that she knows her mother would disapprove of, a choice that will mean her mother’s death. This weighty ethical decision, however, is only the beginning of her struggles—once she sets out to find who meddled with her mother’s life, she finds that not all maintainers are as committed to her mother’s ideals. Ellie and her cousin Daniel choose to seek out the secret network of maintainers whose members have been tweaking the universe for their own personal gain, even if it means plenty of their colleagues now want them dead.

The core concept of this book is an interesting, if mind-bending, one. The skunkworks is a promising playing space for a story, and raises a lot of exciting questions about the way this world functions. The characters come to discover that the skunkworks stores alternative versions of reality, which can then be exploited by a glitch in the system, pulling into existence aspects of events that never occurred. The implications for a glitch like this are far-reaching—what kinds of creative ways might someone use this glitch in reality, and to what end? The other rich aspect of this story was its throughline of food and culture: Ellie’s nostalgia, deeply rooted in her mother’s love of her Taiwanese heritage and cuisine, haunts her with expectations of filial piety. Similarly, her sister Chris has a twisted understanding of parental respect that is incomprehensible to Ellie. Ellie’s culture serves in this way as both comfort and burden to her as she navigates her familial obligations and weighs them against her obligations to the universe itself. The strongest aspect of the novel is how it dives into the complexity of Ellie’s relationship to her heritage and her family.

While both the concept of the skunkworks and the tension caused by Ellie’s fraught relationship to her culture are compelling, however, I was disappointed to find that the narrative did not fully explore either of these things. It was difficult to understand how the skunkworks actually worked, which would not be a problem if it weren’t crucial to my understanding of the story itself. While Ellie often talked about how her mother would disapprove of someone tampering with the universe, I spent much of the book wondering what the actual negative consequences of that would be. In fact, it was difficult for me to determine any stakes because the rules of the skunkworks felt so ill-defined. Every time the characters faced an obstacle, they avoided it so easily—either by using their physics-bending skills or Daniel’s training as a pseudo-assassin—that I never felt they were in any real danger, which meant the stakes felt too low for the plot to be compelling on its own.

That being said, I don’t get the impression that this novel is intended to be plot-driven. While I wish the skunkworks were more directly tied to Ellie’s struggle with loss and familial obligations, it ultimately formed the backdrop of what was primarily a sibling drama. However, the relationship between the two sisters felt outlandishly toxic. I understand that Chris represents filial piety taken to an extreme, but it was an extreme that felt so absurd that it left me wondering why. What life circumstances shaped her into a person who regularly attempts to murder her sister? Motivation also seemed murky for the other members of the cabal keeping Ellie’s mother in stasis. It was clear that Chris’s pathological attachment to her mother drives her to risk the stability of the universe (though I’m not sure why she then sends Ellie to investigate it), but I don’t understand what any of her conspirators gain from it.

Though I certainly found these questions distracting, there were still elements of the book that I enjoyed. The exploration of grief was tender and genuine. While Chris occasionally comes off as cartoonishly evil, some of her more subtle manipulations will certainly resonate with those who have experienced gaslighting or any other form of emotional abuse. The concept of holding someone in a coma in order to utilize the quantum possibilities of timelines in which they are both dead and alive is an interesting one, and if anything I wish it was explored more. I simply felt that these threads didn’t weave together as I hoped they would.

Of all complaints to have about a book, though, “I need you to tell me more” is a pretty mild one. I hope Chu continues to develop this world: I crave more exploration of these unrealized futures that exist in the storage of the skunkworks. Despite my quibbles, I’ll eagerly await John Chu’s next book. To use an analogy befitting such a food-centric book: All the ingredients were exciting enough that I’ll come back for seconds, even if the first course wasn’t quite to my taste.