Isobel Merritt review of Residuals, by Ed Adams

 Isobel Merritt review of Residuals

“What Ed Adams does in Residuals is something I’ve rarely seen: he writes silence as if it were an instrument. This novella doesn’t shout for your attention—it pulls you in with a quiet gravitational force.

The story feels like a heat-shimmered dream of Mallorca, where every shadow and echo hides another century. Josh’s transformation into Farallon is written so delicately that you almost don’t notice when he stops being a man and starts being something else—a Watcher, a witness, a frequency.

The interplay with Elsa is masterful: a thread of tension and recognition, like two people who’ve known each other forever but only just met. The scenes on the yacht, with Zane and Azaria, felt cinematic and unsettling, as if we were watching the architecture of power dissolve into memory.

Residuals bridges Pearl, Tyrant, and Numbers for God, but it’s not just connective tissue—it’s the breath before the dive into The Watcher. A novella you don’t just read—you absorb.”