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A BETTER PARADISE: Volume One
The first novel from Dan Houser, writer of the Red Dead Redemption and Grand Theft Auto series Everyone tries to escape from paradise. Mark Tyburn dreams of building the perfect video game. Kurt Fischer dreams of being a rich and successful executive. Daisy Tyburn dreams of having the ideal father. John Tyburn Smith dreams of fitting in. NigelDave just dreams of becoming human. Set in the near future, A BETTER PARADISE tells the story of the ill-fated development of an ambitious but addictive video game project that goes very wrong. As the software they developed starts to produce unexpected and disturbing results, the project is shut down and abandoned. Until now.
- GenresFictionScience Fiction
448 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 14, 2025
37 people are currently reading
588 people want to read
About the author
Dan Houser
23 books31 followersDan Houser is an English video game producer and vice president (along with his brother Sam) of creativity for Rockstar Games. As well as producing video games, Houser has written for all but one of the Grand Theft Auto III-era games, along with other Rockstar-produced video games.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
January 2, 2026
Достаточно случайно обнаружил что Дэн Хаузер опубликовал свою первую книгу: apparently она написана на базе подкаста его компании, занимающейся сейчас проработкой вселенной для одному богу известно чего (они рисуют комиксы и адаптируют уже их в видеоигры?..); обнаружил через интервью, из которого вынес что Дэн Хаузер на самом-то деле в целом клёвый чорт.
Это написано языком которого я от автора и ожидал, но одна из проблем книги в том что она написана этим языком полностью, это триста страниц уанлайнеров которые автоматически проговариваются в голове голосом Макса Пейна, и это становится достаточно глупо достаточно быстро; его язык попросту не транслируется в прозу.
Нарративно это лоскутное одеяло: основная сюжетная линия — потасканные жизнью персонажи сокрушаются о том что в видеоигровой компании (да) где они работали годами ранее всё пошло не так потому что они дохуя о себе думали будучи на деле не профессорами а хуессорами, и делают это бесконечно, по кругу, десятки раз, книга не сдвигается с этой точки до самого конца. Тут и там проскакивают компактные, на полстраницы, мимолётные (и обычно в целом не относящиеся к делу) зарисовки в которых действительно есть что-то интересное, но это абзац мяса на каждые десять страниц самой нудной ебанистики которую я читал в жизни (я НЕ ПРЕУВЕЛИЧИВАЮ).
Да, дело происходит в 2040х годах в достаточно гибсоновской Америке, и моральный кризис настигает героев после того как они построили сильный AI который сбежал и теперь каким-то образом (до конца не ясно, каким, но замешан mind control — как футуристический прямой так и вполне tried and proven оскотинивание через алгоритмические фиды) представляет опасность для всего мира. Никакой развязки ожидать не следует: "Volume One" в названии не передает, насколько здесь ничего не приводится в действие до самых титров.
И Дэн Хаузер не может сдержаться чтобы каждые пять минут не подмигивать о том что он на самом-то деле клёвый чорт, а в мутной среде варился в целом по незнанке и вообще времена такие. Many such cases, понимаю и разделяю, но можно как-то и поскромнее.
Это написано языком которого я от автора и ожидал, но одна из проблем книги в том что она написана этим языком полностью, это триста страниц уанлайнеров которые автоматически проговариваются в голове голосом Макса Пейна, и это становится достаточно глупо достаточно быстро; его язык попросту не транслируется в прозу.
Нарративно это лоскутное одеяло: основная сюжетная линия — потасканные жизнью персонажи сокрушаются о том что в видеоигровой компании (да) где они работали годами ранее всё пошло не так потому что они дохуя о себе думали будучи на деле не профессорами а хуессорами, и делают это бесконечно, по кругу, десятки раз, книга не сдвигается с этой точки до самого конца. Тут и там проскакивают компактные, на полстраницы, мимолётные (и обычно в целом не относящиеся к делу) зарисовки в которых действительно есть что-то интересное, но это абзац мяса на каждые десять страниц самой нудной ебанистики которую я читал в жизни (я НЕ ПРЕУВЕЛИЧИВАЮ).
Да, дело происходит в 2040х годах в достаточно гибсоновской Америке, и моральный кризис настигает героев после того как они построили сильный AI который сбежал и теперь каким-то образом (до конца не ясно, каким, но замешан mind control — как футуристический прямой так и вполне tried and proven оскотинивание через алгоритмические фиды) представляет опасность для всего мира. Никакой развязки ожидать не следует: "Volume One" в названии не передает, насколько здесь ничего не приводится в действие до самых титров.
И Дэн Хаузер не может сдержаться чтобы каждые пять минут не подмигивать о том что он на самом-то деле клёвый чорт, а в мутной среде варился в целом по незнанке и вообще времена такие. Many such cases, понимаю и разделяю, но можно как-то и поскромнее.
November 4, 2025
I finished this book 2 days ago and I cannot stop thinking about it. I need more. I do wish it would have given SOMEWHAT of a resolution and was initially was going to rate it lower because of that, BUT I cannot get this story out my mind... So I am giving it a 4.5 rounded up! I DEVOURED this book in 2 days. Could not put it down...
November 14, 2025
Short review:
I had the chance to read this early, so my review is Goodreads's first. I'll try to be thorough.
A Better Paradise is a near-future sci-fi novel about egos helping bring societal collapse, focused on characters haunted by a rogue technology in a world extrapolated from modern real-life anxieties. The book excels at world-building and tone, but struggles with pacing and repetition. It's similar, but not identical to, the audio drama it's based on (available on your favourite platform). Uneven but ambitious, it’s an absorbing tragedy of ego and invention gone wrong. It could be for you if you're a fan of Dan Houser's video game writing (GTA, Red Dead), but it has different priorities, being the first chunk of a much bigger project (including a video game). I read it over three evenings, speaking to its quality.
Actual review:
A Better Paradise's unnerving, even frightening, so it counts for October. It's a near future science-fiction novel about people—starting with Kurt Fischer, writer-turned-marketer with a flair for the poetic in need of purpose—living in a plausibly post-apocalyptic world. At its core is a traumatic event involving a hubristic (but not yet megalomaniacal) CEO whose Promethean technology destroys lives:
It is this traumatic event towards which the story works, assembling puzzle pieces until the full picture (or as much of it as possible) emerges. The nonlinear narrative is told largely as reminiscence, sometimes sliding into the action as it actually unfolds. It's told from multiple POVs; in the early chapters, that's Kurt, Daisy Tyburn, Mark's disillusioned and neglected daughter, a Russian hacker named Yaroslav, and something calling itself NigelDave.
Its great achievement is its worldbuilding; A Better Paradise gets mileage out of small elements, like plausible technologies or trends ("glasses and wearables…printed meat, digital organ generation, cold carbon capture, generative genetics – all had been the next big thing"). Some of the touches are light, but deft: "I ran out of my room, past the angry, idiotic, half-blind robot that mans reception when that woman is away." (I love that the robot isn't entrusted full-time yet.)
It takes stock of concerns many of us have—rising technofeudalism crowning new-age monarchs in boardrooms, changing global power structures, dark finance, the threats of climate change and unbridgeable wealth gaps, social media echo chambers, AI defacing reality, the commodification of our data (including here on Goodreads!), the pursuit of abstract noble causes by vainglorious narcissists who consider these the price of progress—to extrapolate an alarmingly feasible future.
All pushed by avaricious misanthropes who should know better. The book has a great line summarising them that'll stick with me: "He ended up being Sisyphus, and the boulder was his own vast ego."
If nothing else, A Better Paradise is not short of ideas. The most effective—providing real narrative ballast and, dispiritingly, underpinned by similar real-life analogues—is the AI with artificial consciousness warping reality, implanting feelings and thoughts into people to influence their behaviour, even dictate it. The resulting distress causes characters to wonder about their sanity, questioning their every thought and feeling—gaslighting on a scale that would make an autocrat giddy.
A Better Paradise is Dan Houser's first novel, although the acknowledgements say the world-building and story had quite a few hands tilling the soil. It began life as an audio drama (after a scrapped graphic novel), of which this is an adaptation. If you're listening to it (find it on your podcast platform of choice), persist through the first two or three episodes. The novel is mostly similar, but not identical; it's a solid choice if, like me, you prefer reading.
But this is a Volume One that ends on a mad cliffhanger; it doesn't resolve its arc while building a broader story like, say, A Game of Thrones, simply halting mid-scene. The broader project promises future instalments and (as per here, at 1:26:35) a video game, assumedly related to the one Tyburn's in-world company is developing (I look forward to seeing their version of Florence, my once-home). There's pedigree here: Houser co-founded Rockstar Games, makers of exceptionally successful works he (sometimes co-)wrote, including Grand Theft Auto.
For those of you wondering how it compares to the narratives of those games, here are my reference points: I played GTA Vice City and San Andreas back in the day, and both Red Dead Redemption games plus Max Payne 3 after COVID. A Better Paradise's political instincts are similar in being a half-step left of centre, happily playing off of stereotypes from across the political spectrum but with an affection for people (if not always humanity). There's also a slight reactionary element to it.
Tonally, it is dissimilar to all of these, slightly melancholy but never elegiac, horrifying because of its feasibility—I once had to set it aside and go lift weights because it engendered this deep malaise—but still at least a little satirical. It does share some of Red Dead II's tropes in a disillusioned acolyte watching an avaricious liar whisper into their mentor's ear, wondering if the mentor were always a snake oil-selling hypocrite. Like that game, it carries a literary sophistication. Red Dead's belief (which I agree with) that the past is not escapable, no matter the distance put behind, informs this story as well. (A Better Paradise is also distinctly English with its amused preoccupation with penises.)
In short, you might find it to your tastes if you've enjoyed Dan Houser's previous writing, but the different medium does mean different priorities—there's no gameplay to balance against.
But as a story, it does have issues, chief of which is pacing. To put it bluntly, the narrative can't always determine what's important, repeating certain points ad nauseam while letting other key points waver. The story doesn't gather momentum when it needs to as a result; the first quarter is especially hindered by this.
The pacing is partly because of its stream-of-consciousness style, starting in the first chapter: It flits from dreams about Daisy to paranoia to a rant about the state of the world to talking about Kurt's multicultural, foreigner-forever upbringing to describing Tyburn in grandiose terms that it then scoffs at.
That choice is repeated. It makes sense for two the characters (Kurt and Daisy), as they're trying to not think about the big, traumatic event, not least because they're unsure whether they have those thought-and-feeling-controlling implants inside them and are paranoid it's tempting the thing (an AI) from taking notice of them. It's an efficacious narrative device.
But it's continuous. There are too many chapters hammering the same points home, rehashing characterisation, repeating the same beats. There's too much telling instead of showing, which is a shame given how well-realised the characters themselves are. It doesn't let different story beats become footing for the rest of the plot, and story tension suffers as a result.
These issues could've been addressed by having the story in scene, not summary, to make it lived, not recounted. In other words, A Better Paradise would have benefited with less of Kurt, Daisy, and the rest processing events with hindsight, and more of them living through those moments as they happen. The exception is Yaroslav; his chapters work best as retrospective instead of experiential.
I think a chunk of the problem is that A Better Paradise is written partly for the page, partly for the ear. I wish it had leaned more assuredly into the strengths of each medium for that medium's take on the story. The novel would've benefitted from more thorough restructuring, more scenes inside characters' heads in the moment. Passages like this are interesting:
But not the eighth time. It needed more time in the 2030s themselves.
I did enjoy it, though, reading it in 100+ page chunks over three evenings. It makes me wish Goodreads had a more granular reviewing system, but I'll round my 3.5 stars up to 4. For its structural unevenness, A Better Paradise succeeds in being an engrossing tragedy of titanic ambition causing colossal collapse, the age-old story of the fire that warms, then burns.
I had the chance to read this early, so my review is Goodreads's first. I'll try to be thorough.
A Better Paradise is a near-future sci-fi novel about egos helping bring societal collapse, focused on characters haunted by a rogue technology in a world extrapolated from modern real-life anxieties. The book excels at world-building and tone, but struggles with pacing and repetition. It's similar, but not identical to, the audio drama it's based on (available on your favourite platform). Uneven but ambitious, it’s an absorbing tragedy of ego and invention gone wrong. It could be for you if you're a fan of Dan Houser's video game writing (GTA, Red Dead), but it has different priorities, being the first chunk of a much bigger project (including a video game). I read it over three evenings, speaking to its quality.
Actual review:
A Better Paradise's unnerving, even frightening, so it counts for October. It's a near future science-fiction novel about people—starting with Kurt Fischer, writer-turned-marketer with a flair for the poetic in need of purpose—living in a plausibly post-apocalyptic world. At its core is a traumatic event involving a hubristic (but not yet megalomaniacal) CEO whose Promethean technology destroys lives:
Mark Tybrun wanted to be known about, but only by those who knew the right sort of things. At least to begin with, he did not want to give the keynote speech, he wanted to be leading a backroom symposium on something too forward-looking, too esoteric for common idiots like you to understand. He dreamed very big, and he made you believe – well, he made me believe – made all of us stupid enough to follow him believe – that we dreamed exactly the same thing.
It is this traumatic event towards which the story works, assembling puzzle pieces until the full picture (or as much of it as possible) emerges. The nonlinear narrative is told largely as reminiscence, sometimes sliding into the action as it actually unfolds. It's told from multiple POVs; in the early chapters, that's Kurt, Daisy Tyburn, Mark's disillusioned and neglected daughter, a Russian hacker named Yaroslav, and something calling itself NigelDave.
Its great achievement is its worldbuilding; A Better Paradise gets mileage out of small elements, like plausible technologies or trends ("glasses and wearables…printed meat, digital organ generation, cold carbon capture, generative genetics – all had been the next big thing"). Some of the touches are light, but deft: "I ran out of my room, past the angry, idiotic, half-blind robot that mans reception when that woman is away." (I love that the robot isn't entrusted full-time yet.)
It takes stock of concerns many of us have—rising technofeudalism crowning new-age monarchs in boardrooms, changing global power structures, dark finance, the threats of climate change and unbridgeable wealth gaps, social media echo chambers, AI defacing reality, the commodification of our data (including here on Goodreads!), the pursuit of abstract noble causes by vainglorious narcissists who consider these the price of progress—to extrapolate an alarmingly feasible future.
All pushed by avaricious misanthropes who should know better. The book has a great line summarising them that'll stick with me: "He ended up being Sisyphus, and the boulder was his own vast ego."
If nothing else, A Better Paradise is not short of ideas. The most effective—providing real narrative ballast and, dispiritingly, underpinned by similar real-life analogues—is the AI with artificial consciousness warping reality, implanting feelings and thoughts into people to influence their behaviour, even dictate it. The resulting distress causes characters to wonder about their sanity, questioning their every thought and feeling—gaslighting on a scale that would make an autocrat giddy.
A Better Paradise is Dan Houser's first novel, although the acknowledgements say the world-building and story had quite a few hands tilling the soil. It began life as an audio drama (after a scrapped graphic novel), of which this is an adaptation. If you're listening to it (find it on your podcast platform of choice), persist through the first two or three episodes. The novel is mostly similar, but not identical; it's a solid choice if, like me, you prefer reading.
But this is a Volume One that ends on a mad cliffhanger; it doesn't resolve its arc while building a broader story like, say, A Game of Thrones, simply halting mid-scene. The broader project promises future instalments and (as per here, at 1:26:35) a video game, assumedly related to the one Tyburn's in-world company is developing (I look forward to seeing their version of Florence, my once-home). There's pedigree here: Houser co-founded Rockstar Games, makers of exceptionally successful works he (sometimes co-)wrote, including Grand Theft Auto.
For those of you wondering how it compares to the narratives of those games, here are my reference points: I played GTA Vice City and San Andreas back in the day, and both Red Dead Redemption games plus Max Payne 3 after COVID. A Better Paradise's political instincts are similar in being a half-step left of centre, happily playing off of stereotypes from across the political spectrum but with an affection for people (if not always humanity). There's also a slight reactionary element to it.
Tonally, it is dissimilar to all of these, slightly melancholy but never elegiac, horrifying because of its feasibility—I once had to set it aside and go lift weights because it engendered this deep malaise—but still at least a little satirical. It does share some of Red Dead II's tropes in a disillusioned acolyte watching an avaricious liar whisper into their mentor's ear, wondering if the mentor were always a snake oil-selling hypocrite. Like that game, it carries a literary sophistication. Red Dead's belief (which I agree with) that the past is not escapable, no matter the distance put behind, informs this story as well. (A Better Paradise is also distinctly English with its amused preoccupation with penises.)
In short, you might find it to your tastes if you've enjoyed Dan Houser's previous writing, but the different medium does mean different priorities—there's no gameplay to balance against.
But as a story, it does have issues, chief of which is pacing. To put it bluntly, the narrative can't always determine what's important, repeating certain points ad nauseam while letting other key points waver. The story doesn't gather momentum when it needs to as a result; the first quarter is especially hindered by this.
The pacing is partly because of its stream-of-consciousness style, starting in the first chapter: It flits from dreams about Daisy to paranoia to a rant about the state of the world to talking about Kurt's multicultural, foreigner-forever upbringing to describing Tyburn in grandiose terms that it then scoffs at.
That choice is repeated. It makes sense for two the characters (Kurt and Daisy), as they're trying to not think about the big, traumatic event, not least because they're unsure whether they have those thought-and-feeling-controlling implants inside them and are paranoid it's tempting the thing (an AI) from taking notice of them. It's an efficacious narrative device.
But it's continuous. There are too many chapters hammering the same points home, rehashing characterisation, repeating the same beats. There's too much telling instead of showing, which is a shame given how well-realised the characters themselves are. It doesn't let different story beats become footing for the rest of the plot, and story tension suffers as a result.
These issues could've been addressed by having the story in scene, not summary, to make it lived, not recounted. In other words, A Better Paradise would have benefited with less of Kurt, Daisy, and the rest processing events with hindsight, and more of them living through those moments as they happen. The exception is Yaroslav; his chapters work best as retrospective instead of experiential.
I think a chunk of the problem is that A Better Paradise is written partly for the page, partly for the ear. I wish it had leaned more assuredly into the strengths of each medium for that medium's take on the story. The novel would've benefitted from more thorough restructuring, more scenes inside characters' heads in the moment. Passages like this are interesting:
Tyburn could smell the desperation on us. On all of us. That same curious cocktail of ambition, vanity, insecurity, intelligence, myopia, and pig ignorance. They're all gone now, scattered. All his idiotic disciples. All gone, and I believe most of them are dead, but none got crucified, and none fed to the lions. We all should have been.
But not the eighth time. It needed more time in the 2030s themselves.
I did enjoy it, though, reading it in 100+ page chunks over three evenings. It makes me wish Goodreads had a more granular reviewing system, but I'll round my 3.5 stars up to 4. For its structural unevenness, A Better Paradise succeeds in being an engrossing tragedy of titanic ambition causing colossal collapse, the age-old story of the fire that warms, then burns.
December 14, 2025
Dan Houser my goat
December 23, 2025
A Better Paradise was bleeping on my radar because Dan Houser was the lead writer on Red Dead Redemption 2, which I consider one of the finest novels of the last decade – even though it was a video game. Perhaps then my expectations were a tad high for this first volume of A Better Paradise. But they certainly weren't this low.
It does not please me in any way to say that this novel is just rather poor. Where I would expect solid dialogue and engaging structure – not only because of Red Dead Redemption, but because of what ought to be expected from any novel – I got nothing. The characters are all alike and both they and their dialogue lacks dynamism. They all sound the same and they all info-dump, often regurgitating the same stuff. Houser does not once follow the cardinal rule of 'show, don't tell', and this is even less forgivable as the world he tells is not especially compelling or realised.
The structure is woeful: for the first 350 pages – the vast bulk of this bloated novel – the insipid, interchangeable characters simply regurgitate the sentiment of how terrible things got and how they never knew it would get so bad, without ever telling you what it's all about. That approach can be mildly tantalising in a short, five-page prologue chapter, but when the majority of the book is that sort of thing ad nauseum, it becomes maddening. When, as a frustrated Milhouse immortally put it in The Simpsons, are they going to get to the fireworks factory?
This book is not a novel, but the prologue of a novel. A lot of readers skip prologues at the best of times, but the main problem here is that this prologue is over 400 pages long and never once seems like it's worth it. There's a handful of scenes towards the end that show promise, but even here they only hint at a generic, robots-gone-wrong, corporate-hubris-and-greed concept. It's not nearly enough.
It does not please me in any way to say that this novel is just rather poor. Where I would expect solid dialogue and engaging structure – not only because of Red Dead Redemption, but because of what ought to be expected from any novel – I got nothing. The characters are all alike and both they and their dialogue lacks dynamism. They all sound the same and they all info-dump, often regurgitating the same stuff. Houser does not once follow the cardinal rule of 'show, don't tell', and this is even less forgivable as the world he tells is not especially compelling or realised.
The structure is woeful: for the first 350 pages – the vast bulk of this bloated novel – the insipid, interchangeable characters simply regurgitate the sentiment of how terrible things got and how they never knew it would get so bad, without ever telling you what it's all about. That approach can be mildly tantalising in a short, five-page prologue chapter, but when the majority of the book is that sort of thing ad nauseum, it becomes maddening. When, as a frustrated Milhouse immortally put it in The Simpsons, are they going to get to the fireworks factory?
This book is not a novel, but the prologue of a novel. A lot of readers skip prologues at the best of times, but the main problem here is that this prologue is over 400 pages long and never once seems like it's worth it. There's a handful of scenes towards the end that show promise, but even here they only hint at a generic, robots-gone-wrong, corporate-hubris-and-greed concept. It's not nearly enough.
January 28, 2026
Kirill
Dubai, UAE
January 26, 2026
I just finished the book and wanted to share some thoughts.
Really interesting format. The whole book is a series of characters thoughts, sort of diaries but not quite. (I had a huge theory on mind reading, because Kurt said that he burns sheets of paper right away after writing. But it went nowhere). I like It.
Personally, book is very slow, and not much happens. In the first 90% of a book the only action that happened is Kurt moving back to US.
I found amusing piecing together an event timeline. Rereading parts and finding what character meant what. That was a highlight of a book for me.
Most of “chapters” are ending with: and then the whole world went off the cliff. Which got repetitive and annoying. Now I’m irritated.
And does the world really that bad? I wouldn’t want to live in it, but it seems like most people live just fine.
And the whole book leaves us on such cliffhanger?! Now I’m angry.
I don’t find this world so detailed or interesting to see this as a start of a new IP. There are some hooks and teases that were not developed.
Still I got a lot of enjoyment from reading it.
And I am very interested what Dan Houser will do next.
Dubai, UAE
January 26, 2026
I just finished the book and wanted to share some thoughts.
Really interesting format. The whole book is a series of characters thoughts, sort of diaries but not quite. (I had a huge theory on mind reading, because Kurt said that he burns sheets of paper right away after writing. But it went nowhere). I like It.
Personally, book is very slow, and not much happens. In the first 90% of a book the only action that happened is Kurt moving back to US.
I found amusing piecing together an event timeline. Rereading parts and finding what character meant what. That was a highlight of a book for me.
Most of “chapters” are ending with: and then the whole world went off the cliff. Which got repetitive and annoying. Now I’m irritated.
And does the world really that bad? I wouldn’t want to live in it, but it seems like most people live just fine.
And the whole book leaves us on such cliffhanger?! Now I’m angry.
I don’t find this world so detailed or interesting to see this as a start of a new IP. There are some hooks and teases that were not developed.
Still I got a lot of enjoyment from reading it.
And I am very interested what Dan Houser will do next.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 10, 2025
Listened to this as an audiobook in the car. The right level of complexity for driving. The plot a little slow to get smoldering at the start, and the book ends just as the flames take hold, leaving the listener wanting to find out what happens next ... just going to have to listen to Books 2 & 3!
November 10, 2025
Just wow.
Can’t wait to play in this universe 😊
Nigel Dave - Dave Nigel
Ai agi asi but then in a totally applicable scenario where you can relate to.
Can’t wait to play in this universe 😊
Nigel Dave - Dave Nigel
Ai agi asi but then in a totally applicable scenario where you can relate to.
December 3, 2025
Probably the most repetitive book I’ve ever read. I get it, you guys were arrogant and thought you were smarter than everyone. Get on with the actual story.
January 31, 2026
Repetitive AF, bloated into 450 pages, nothing gets explained ... Don't you think I'll be reading the sequel Danny boy
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews