The Elsewhere Express by Samantha Sotto Yambao Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy fantasy, fantasy, fantasy romance, magical realism, romantasy
Pages: 432
Published by Del Rey on January 20, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads
When you lose your way in life, the Elsewhere Express just might find you. Step aboard the train that can take you to your life’s purpose, in this cozy and inspiring fantasy from the nationally bestselling author of Water Moon.
This whimsical, deluxe first edition hardcover includes designed sprayed edges, a full-color illustrated book case with character art, and interactive endpapers with a scene you can color in—while supplies last!
You can’t buy a ticket for the Elsewhere Express. Appearing only to those whose lives are adrift, it’s a magical train carrying very rare and special cargo: a sense of purpose, peace, and belonging.
Raya is one of those lost souls. She had dreamed of being a songwriter, but when her brother died, she gave up on her dream and started living his instead.
One day on the subway, as her thoughts wander, she’s swept off to the Elsewhere Express. There she meets Q, a charming, handsome artist who, like her, has lost his place in the world.
Together they find a train full of wonders, from a boarding car that’s also a meadow to a dining car where passengers can picnic on lily pads to a bar where jellyfish and whales swim through pink clouds.
But they also discover that the train harbors secrets—and danger: A mysterious stranger has stowed away and brought with him a dark, malignant magic that threatens to destroy the train.
But in investigating the stowaway's identity, Raya also finds herself drawing closer to the ultimate question: What is her life's true purpose—and might Q be connected to it?
My Review:
The Elsewhere Express is a train. Well, it takes the form of a train. Whether or not it’s actually or exactly a train is up for a bit of a debate. It’s mostly a metaphor. Well, sorta/kinda. And does that EVER need some explanation.
Which is not what the two most recent passengers on the Elsewhere Express get. Also not exactly but sorta/kinda.
There’s a LOT of that going around this particular train.
The Elsewhere Express is where people find themselves when they want to or need to be, well, elsewhere. When they’re wishing themselves someplace else. When their burdens are too heavy to carry. When life is too much and they want to escape.
And all of those thoughts and griefs and daydreams, right and wrong and good and bad, make up the Express. Literally. Every single car, every single device, every single bit of food and drink, everything, everywhere all around the passengers is built on thoughts and dreams – and maybe just a few nightmares.
So the Express is a place to get away from all of that, where a passenger can leave all their troubles behind. But the problem with people is that, no matter where you go, there you are. You bring yourself and all your worries and griefs with you wherever you are, no matter how much you want to get away from them.
But the Express has a solution for that, too. A potion that each passenger is expected to take that makes them forget all the excess emotional baggage they brought with them on the train.
Which is both a relief and a gigantic problem, as its our memories that make us who we are – even if who we are is depressed and grief-stricken and weighed down by worries and expectations.
That’s where, and when, Raya and Q board the Express. Raya, musician turned medical student, can’t get over her grief or her guilt over the death of the brother she was born to save. Q, an artist, can’t get past the loss of his sight – and his dreams – or the suicide death of his father.
Q would love to forget all of his griefs and just live for today on the Express, because his today on the Express has magically restored his sight. Raya doesn’t believe she deserves to stay and forget, because the emotional baggage she’s unwilling to drop is her guilt.
But Q and Raya are unique on the Express in that they are the only passengers who have not taken the forgetting potion – at least not yet. And the Express desperately needs people who have not forgotten what it is to feel pain and most importantly, break the rules.
Otherwise the Express is going to die, because no one, not even the staff entrusted with her care, has enough fire in their belly to risk everything in the hope of saving someone – and especially each other.
Escape Rating A-: I picked this up because I enjoyed the author’s previous book, Water Moon. Howsomever, having read that I was expecting this to also hit some of the same notes, meaning that I expected magical realism filled with sad fluff that goes to bigger questions but leaves the reader to work out the answers in their own heads.
And I certainly did get all of that. Along with a combination of the movie Somewhere in Time (or the book of the same title by Richard Matheson), Alice in Wonderland and even The Wizard of Oz. Meaning that the characters have been dropped through the ‘looking-glass’, that there is more than one someone hiding behind the curtain, and that they fall in love in spite of not being in sync in time and space.
What I did not expect is that the train itself is one ginormous “Forgetting Room”, not from the Nick Bantock story but from Kathryn H. Ross’ story “The Forgetting Room” published in FIYAH Issue #30 in 2024 and included in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2025 edited by Nnedi Okorafor.
That story, and this book, are underlaid by the desire to forget the things that bother us, and include a fantasy/SFnal means of doing so. The stories that follow, both Ross’ short story and this novel, deal with the collateral damage of actually doing it. In (or on) the Elsewhere Express the long-term consequences are only dealt with by implication, along with the question of just because a person is comfortable and busy, does that mean they are actually happy.
It’s a question that doesn’t get answered in the story, but then it can’t. It’s left to the reader to wonder. A LOT in the case of this particular reader.
What this story turns out to be is a quest and a chase, about caring enough to make a selfless sacrifice for the one you love, and about doing a duty to make that sacrifice feel worthwhile. I was expecting this to have a bittersweet ending – because that’s where everything was heading.
That it squeaked out a happy ending in spite of all the expectations that were set was a bit of a surprise and an absolute delight.
