Review of Pulse, by Ed Adams

 

Pulse: The Amber Room closes not with a triumphant resolution, but with a shimmer of absence, a studied refusal to settle the score. What lingers is not victory but vibration: a Picasso mask that ripples like an aperture; a bottle of Taittinger stolen from a minibar, absurd and sacramental; a phone call that folds the speculative into the geopolitical with the mention of Ukraine’s looming invasion.

It is this collapse of registers—the domestic, the mythic, the political—that marks the book’s daring. The final page, a fragmented stanza, recalls Pearl in its refusal of closure: champagne, ambra, mask, game, cards. Each noun a glyph. Each period a drumbeat. The effect is liturgical, a closing that opens.

The kicker? That final verse-like stanza. It’s not a cliffhanger, exactly. More like a memory bomb. The champagne, the ambra, the mask, the game. All still in play. If you’ve read Pearl or Tyrant, you’ll feel the connective tissue. If not, it still works: the story ends like a hand of cards cut and left waiting for the next shuffle.

E.J.Snibbs.