While it is subversive of dystopia fiction, generally. As it’s mostly just a high degree of verisimilitude of folks living their lives. The prose are fine, but not evocative or particularly interesting in any way. The characters are effective in showing the the everyday aspects of life, as well as a military component. The ending is perfunctory. This was just okay, in every respect.

All the pleasure I got out of it came from a the meta level, where I found it parallels cli-fi without even meaning to. Climate events will similarly impact the peripheral of life on the planet. Only they will probably be first, not last. But the responsibility for change is, again, the first world countries, by a mile. And people will have no choice but to live anxiety ridden lives ridden into the ground. In that way, this book is pertinent and prescient. I only wish the other components of it were more interesting. If it wasn’t so short I doubt I’d have slogged through.

I think this succeeds at what it’s doing, but it’s a bit of a mixed bag for me.

I’ll start with my gripes so I can end positively. The number one issue I have is voice. It’s constructed in such a way as to express scientific problems in as straight forward and clear and concise a way as possible. But the byproduct of that is a really bland, overly simplistic character voice when he is not solving problems. It’s also just a weird point-of-view that breaks when you think about it. It routinely breaks the fourth wall and shifts in time from the present to the past. Basically, it’s a very organic sounding voice from the POV, but it’s also sloppy for the sake of a couple laughs. This is only compounded because the narrator actually bugs me. He’s not the worst, but with such a highly anticipated book they could have easily got someone who makes more sense for the POV.

The problems also feel pretty organic as well. A plus, until things start getting a bit rudimentary for my liking. Without going into spoilers, there is a lot of hand waving around things that aren’t science. Particularly linguistically. It does fit, but it feels like a lot of suspension of disbelief. Mostly because, unlike most fiction, hard science provides so much factual information that the fictional mental gaps actually feel harder for me to leap, if that makes sense? Makes the hand waving of really huge notions about the nature of the problems that would manifest in the situations in the book feel really glaring.

Also the jokes are very hit and miss.

On the plus column though, when and if you accept the glaring conceit that enables most of the problems to present in a surmountable and understandable way, they’re inventive and interesting ones to solve. They’re not normal “space problems”. The narrative does its best to not illustrate how boring it can be being alone with the protagonist, who is really uninteresting. Using an amnesia trope, it cuts back and forth as Grace remembers his past, filling in how he came to be on the ship and why. It’s quite effective and, while somewhat padded, is mostly interesting. I also liked the ending a lot. It felt right for the story.

Where this lands, ultimately, is basically like a Dan Brown book for me, I think? The writing itself it pretty uninteresting. Dialogue is better than Brown overall, of course. But untimely you pick up a Brown book for the puzzle…and the travelogue component, but you get my point. When there’s the next piece of the puzzle happening, it’s good. When it’s doing other stuff it ranges from bad to alright. The problems are unique. The plot and its beats are not.

It’s commercial fiction with, not a gimmick, but a thing that makes it more attractive and that is executed pretty well. And so, expectations wise, it fits the bill. No more, no less.

Two ideologically opposed men of an older generation have an altercation in a park because, unbeknownst to the right leaning man, his dog actually has bitten the other. But when the commotion begins said man only sees the other kick the dog away from me, so he flies into a rage and hits him. His daughter is a witness and tells him it was the dogs fault but he doesn’t listen to her, and even goes so far as to put up an erroneous blog post painting himself in a decent light.

The pacifist left-leaning person is inclined to let it all go, but his son is really bothered by this emasculation and decides to retaliate, which results in a sort of pressure cooker situation unfolding. Life also conspires to have the two children meet as the narrative also follows their lives and how the events at the park change them.

What follows is an exploration on a few things. Primarily, I think, it’s trying to shine on a lot on motivated thinking; you might also have heard it called confirmation bias. It might also be exploring toxic masculinity, but I think that is a sort of byproduct of the narrative and not intentional. It doesn’t really land the themes it’s going for in a satisfying way, if it aims to. I think it mostly wants a dialogue with the complexities and limitations of empathy. Sometimes it’s effective, other times not. The resolution of this central tension between the older men, for instance, feels quite odd to me. The peripheral characters have plot beats, even the dog does, but these are left somewhat hanging at a very ambiguous ending that would have done better to resolve a few things.

The result it feels toothless, but interesting, at times. Which is how I felt about the artwork as well. Interesting, but uneven and a bit strange; spontaneous panels do look exceptional, though.

What an interesting book. I’ve seen people call it a “proto-Cloud Atlas” and that rings true for me as well. It’s not as refined but the idea is there, not to mention so many references to other Mitchell books it makes me dizzy.

There are 9 stories (10 chapters but first and last is the same character) in this one. A more unwieldy beast, to be sure. I won’t recount all of them because there is so much that happens. But know that each is a short story that references the previous one. We globe trot, enter many different lives. A young man at a record store who falls for a girl visiting, and their situation, which wraps up in a subsequent chapter; a cult member indoctrinated into terrorist; broke womanizer who seems to be a marble tossed, hitting both good and bad luck. Different people, different locations, but the same eternal struggle for what they need, want, crave, etc. the trappings of humanity that defines them being sought.

Some win, some lose.

As with short stories for me, some spoke to me more so than others. The referential aspects to each story did make me engage with the ones I didn’t care about more though, so that is successful. It feels thematically not very cogent, however. Feeling more preoccupied with its structure and notions for a particular story than a really exciting unifying concept.

Where Cloud Atlas benefits from the refinement of voice and the better structure, in which each novellas builds to a climax and then cascades downward to the end.

Yet this is far from unsatisfying. I liked the leap frog narrative and really, really loved how it tied in with so much other stuff; most especially the meta component. I really liked it, but much prefer Mitchell’s longer form novella formats than short stories. But I also rarely enjoy short story collections, so it could easily be a subjective component that will allow some readers to enjoy it more than me.

Now, be warned, I want to talk spoilers here.
In the future id like to be able to remember the ties to other books so want to get the things I saw down, and then if I re read it in the future, add to it.

First of all, it was soooo exciting to build anticipation with each book from Bone Clocks on to this one, as this sort of describes a bird of an atemporal being that, presumably, becomes a horologist. I wish I knew which one—and am almost certain it would have been referenced in the Bone Clocks when they speak of their past lives. That whole chapter was really, really cool.

There is also the comet that passes by and that is a symbol in Cloud Atlas in birth mark form, marking a reincarnated soul. But interestingly, Luisa Rey calls into a radio program and is already a journalist, so I may just be conflating that with the movie and not the book? Perhaps in the book the characters don’t have the mark… or perhaps the mark is a reference but bares no meaning, or a different meaning I was unable to discern here with that chapter with the A.I and atemporal person, presumably the horologist from their chapter. Who knows?

Also noticed, of course, Tim Cavindish, the publisher, which was neat. And Neal Brose and I THINK a man with the same last name of another kid in Black Swan Green. But nothing important there, just fun.

Suhbataar, from the next book, Number9Dream plays a fairly major role, and as I documented, this takes place in Mongolia, I believe, so that does feel like the 9Dream chapter is from an atemporal person, possibly the one in this book? Who the F is it though?

Dwight Silverhand, a published author here, is mentioned in Bone Clocks, but I think as a crock?

And finally Mo Muntervary I’ve highlighted because it rings a bell, and is in Ireland. I imagine that’s in the Bone Clocks in some way, as that has a lot of chapters set there. Maybe she’s the one who ends up with our heroine?… can’t recall.

Anyway, way more connections than most books (that I’ve noticed). Loved it. Very cool.

I don’t need to specifically like a character, just understand them. So, it’s natural that I’d like to this more than the previous book. Every aspect of this is better than the first. Characters are far more realized and contradictory, fleshed out, and understandable—so much so that it actually makes the first book better.

Things look up from a craft perspective as well. The plot beats are more interesting, as is the world building. There’s a character arc that isn’t as tropey. The plotting was actually exceptional. And the prose moved from being a bit annoying, to being pretty invisible (aside from a few cringey sentences early on). It’s commercial fiction, but you can tell she has a handle on the tone and diction so as to cater the prose to the audience, whereas previously they felt unwieldy and not indicative of good voice.

I think this does a better job at making explicit the toxic traits of every individual, including Feyre, who feels like a young adult navigating coming-of-age-aspects and her physical changes and trauma—all while dealing with the way she’s been socialized. I quite liked that she she was… well, unlikable at times. All the characters have this quality and I just prefer characters like that, especially in the genre and this age.

It was so much easier to care about what was happening, too. At first blush, it’s such a long book for what it is, but the length actually makes the romance angle way more believable than insta love. The powers from her change are interesting. Rhys is far more complex, as far as characters in fantasy romance goes. And I liked the new characters and their dynamics quite a bit too.

The ending felt a bit over the top. So much happens that it does make the next instalment interesting, but it also made it feel more scripted than organic. I liked very much the setup for what’s to come though, so I’m on board. I can see why people loved this one; it’s genuinely quite good, especially when contrasted to the first book. So much has been improved.

I’ve been fascinated with this ever since parasocial relationships on social media have been pervasive and I pretty much have to interact with it as a self published author. This book is well structured, well researched, and is great at explaining each section and how it is pertinent to everyday life.

I am probably not the target audience for this, having never read a book by the siblings. I had heard of their early year writing escapades though, and this was recommended.

It has some interesting things to say about the validity of fan fiction and juvenilia. The importance of play and the push-pull relationship of bleed in writings and the use of it in coping with “real world” problems. I liked that quite a bit.

I did not really care for the actual fan fiction buts, unfortunately. It’s a large part of the book. It really does feel juvenile and a bit pointless, even when paired with the meta narrative. Just random, mostly stupid, plot beats, for the most part.

I also didn’t get on with the art style. So, really the only thing here for me was the larger meta themes, which were enough to get by on, but not enough to provoke more than some interest in our relationship to our writings. It’s not nothing, but clearly people more here than I have.

The voice in this is so strange, but makes everyone more intelligent and pretentious, so I like it, of course. Totally, something like Burn Without Notice comes to mind. Funny, intelligent, very strange at times. It runs no risk of feeling generic.

There’s an ostensible conspiracy ostensibly orchestrated by a synthetic water company. Wild fires are raging. Everything substantive seems to be crumbling down, as our protagonist ventures into the home of the wild fire to impress his wife and child, both of whom are tapped into the movements of the world and speak in yogi-like gestures of wisdom.

His hope is to see the adaptation of his novel to a Hollywood production, as though that would somehow rescind his malaise. He teams up with a product of Hollywood, an actress sleuth, and they become a dynamic duo of P.Is, each unwittingly using the other as a foil for their own inadequacies.

It’s a very weird novel. But it held my attention, was a pleasure to read, had themes—especially when focused on climate effects—that I personally resonate with, these days. The narration was great on the audiobook. It was a bit messy, or else it’d probably have been a five star read. It’s a notable read of the year for me, just because it’s unlike most things I’ve read.

I gave it till 25%. This just isn’t for me, clearly.

I am not interested in what he’s interested in. I don’t like his writing. I don’t like that this seems to be for people for people who know the author to some degree already. He refers to peoples’ names in this he hasn’t mentioned, sometimes without any connotations at all. A lot of these essays are thoughts I probably wouldn’t articulate to my friends. It’s like a scene in a movie when someone says they have an idea, and they say it, and everyone states at them because it’s not an idea. Is this anything? No. I don’t think it is. But I’m glad people seem to have gotten joy from it.

Though, it’s cute (for the first couple essays) assigning arbitrary star ratings to things, and I’d love an alternate method on that front.

2.5 rounded up

This felt like it spent a lot of time on stuff that wasn’t very interesting, which only annunciated the pacing issues. I did like the exploration of sexuality and gender, when it did get there, but otherwise it felt fairly generic in voice and style. The world building acted as a counterpoint sometimes, but inconsistently. In the final third of the novel things start picking up and it does nail some of the things it’s going for. I just wish it didn’t feel like a slog to get to each part I did enjoy.