McSquid

Excellent debut

Revisado: 07-23-23

Thrilling debut novel. I listened to it in one go because I couldn’t put it down.

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I loved this story

Revisado: 04-19-23

I’m normally a sci-fi/fantasy reader/listener, but for some reason the algorithm has been steering me in a more literary and/or realistic direction. The first attempt at this was a huge miss (The Overstory). The next attempt was a nice bit of fluffy and forgettable magical realism (Remarkably Bright Creatures).

This book? I honestly loved it, and it will stick in my mind for a while. I’m not a gamer because I wasn’t really allowed to be growing up, but I found the characters very relatable, and the way they kept coming apart and back together again was incredibly moving.

The way that people communicated on so many levels, the real worlds, the story/virtual worlds, the way that people can find healing through games, I found this incredibly compelling.

The characters were so real, and even the unlikable ones were incredibly entertaining to read. The ending was so subtle and mundane, and yet it surprised me by bringing me to tears. Such a moment requires masterful work to set up.

The narrator seemed a little…unemotive. I think it is a testament to the writing that I was so moved despite the narrator’s somewhat flat delivery. It’s also possible that this is customary for literary fiction, as I have very little listening experience in this genre.

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Needs an editor

Revisado: 01-24-22

This book was full of unprofessional errors. Boring, unimaginative, rambling plot, uninteresting characters, subplots that randomly went nowhere, astronauts who repeatedly demonstrated that they had no understanding of basic science, pointless conflicts, unimaginative and repetitive character descriptions, unnecessary dialogue…ugh, what a slog. It sounded like it was written by a 16-year-old boy with no friends. Crap like this getting published is why nobody takes science fiction seriously.

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I hated it

Revisado: 01-18-22

I could not suspend disbelief, not because of the sci-fi premise (which was fine), but because everyone in the book was incredibly stupid and kept making the same dumb decisions over and over again.

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Authors should not narrate their own books unless they are actually professional narrators

Revisado: 10-31-21

I understand this book was a Hugo and Nebula winner. Maybe I would have enjoyed it more with a better narrator. Bad narrators make it easy to see the holes in stories. They constantly take you out of the action and remind you that things aren’t flowing. I can’t tell if the story was much good, because the author just plain sucked at narration. I don’t know why an author would willingly sabotage their own book like this. Maybe they didn’t think I was any good. Anyway, I sincerely hope they hire a professional narrator for future books. I love sci-fi and I love murder mysteries, and this was a hot mess because of the stilted, confusing narration.

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It’s a shame he can’t write women

Revisado: 09-28-21

I loved everything about this book, except for the ridiculous way he writes women and the borderline pedophilia inherent in writing a literal child trying to seduce a 35-year-old man. Is it so hard not to be creepy and weird about women and girls? To write them as more than lust and body type obsession? It was enough to repeatedly take me out of what was otherwise an incredible story.

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Trash

Revisado: 06-29-21

This book is garbage and audible won’t let me return it. I feel like I’ve been defrauded. The story is crap, it sounds like it was written by a 21-year-old college student without an editor. The idea is dumb, the science is malformed and muddled, the characters are embarrassingly stereotypical and flat. I hate everything about this book!

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Trite torture porn for people who take burning man wayyy too seriously

Revisado: 06-17-21

This story is ugly, violent, and full of obnoxious and dated stereotypes and cliches. Hancock tries to delve into the nature of evil, but clearly has a child’s view of this, despite delighting throughout the book in describing gruesome acts of violence against children. I think he enjoys describing rape, murder and cannibalism a *wee* bit much, and this impression is reinforced by his shrilly defensive forward to the book, wherein he pleads with us to believe him when he says that his descriptions of violence are only there because they are somehow true to history. Well, we all know how well Hancock understands history.

And the book is just loaded with boring, lazy, bigoted tropes: an “ugly hook-nosed” scientist with an excess of facial hair named “Shapira”, the main gay character being brutally and gruesomely murdered, unimaginative and anachronistic representations of prehistoric cultures (Hancock’s well-known laziness with facts and history is on full display here), the ridiculous tinfoil hat name given to the enemy race (“the Illumani”), the suspicious way a literal minor child becomes romantically interested in “Matt Aubrey” a British, middle-aged apparent burnout who ends up being a wealthy James Bond type and an obvious stand-in for Hancock himself.

Aside from these flaws, the book as a whole is poorly-edited. It gets off to a decent start, and then starts to drag on and on with relentless and unnecessarily long descriptions of unthinkable violence that do nothing to move the story along. The nature of the “magic” involved in the time-travel and “entanglement” is poorly-defined and self-inconsistent...kinda like the internal logic of a psychedelic trip.

And then the book just kinda...ends. I get that it’s supposed to be the first in a series, but there are none of the hints a more competent writer (or editor) would insist upon to prepare the reader for this part of the story to end. The story has no shape. In the end, it’s kinda like hearing your friend describe a really bad trip they had at Burning Man.

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Dumb

Revisado: 11-07-20

This was dumb and cheesy. There were so many missed opportunities. The sentient ship? The college friend? All these interesting things just got dropped. Even the aliens were just a stupid way for the protagonist to get a superpower. Lame. At least it was free

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Jesus Christ Get an Editor

Revisado: 03-22-19

I’m 5 hours away from the end of this dumpster fire, and I don’t know what the f*** is going on here or why any of it matters. GET TO THE POINT ALREADY. Please for the love of weeping baby Jesus.

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