Reviews and Comments

I am determined to finish at least the first book, even though I hate it. Actually, maybe it's because I hate it. I don't like to rate or review books I haven't finished, but I feel compelled to talk about how terrible this book is. The author is a frequent offender on r/menwritingwomen, and for good reason. He claims all the misogyny (among other things) is intentional, because the story is "filtered through the mind & eyes of a 17 year old boy". That's a pretty dubious claim on its face, and it doesn't really explain why all the other characters do and say what they do. Maybe I'll flesh this out more when I finish it.

On the other hand, generally the writing itself is decent enough, even if it gets a little purple prose at times. Just watch the show, it's 1000% better than the source material.

EDIT: I finally finished it, which was not really worth doing. I think I would mostly describe this book as "Dresden Files but longer for no reason", except at least Harry is poor in that series. Q is equally as misogynistic and then incredibly wealthy to boot. Oh, and the author's justification turns out to fall extra flat because by the end of the book, he is very much not 17 anymore, but still very much an incel.

Rylla is kind of the worst, but in like, a way that I think may be intentional. She's on a journey like Candide, and similarly you spend most of the book thinking "No! You dumbass, what are you doing?!", etc. All the other characters mostly introduce and weigh the merits of tons of different solutions to the earth dying, but I think you can really tell which ones get the book's stamp of approval. I think the author of this and the authors of Half Earth Socialism would get in a fight, because this book seems to lean into banking on ridiculous tech "solutions" that probably will never materialize and might easily cause more harm than good. But I don't know nothing about nothing, so maybe I read into it wrong.

EDIT: I thought about it and I think I was wrong. The primitivists were a valid critique and the wastrels were the steelman version of that take on the apocalypse. And the book is very critical of tech solutions actually.