2Dee

by Robin Wyatt Dunn

The population of Los Angeles has vanished. John Dee has to find out why. With the help of his AI son, he journeys between dimensions, undergoes radical body modifications, topples extrasolar governments, and hunts his lost love, all without a clear idea of who he is. To rescue his city, and himself, he must confront both the cruelty of the universe he finds himself in, and his own interior darkness.

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"Weird, avant-garde, poetic and challenging. Robin Dunn's 2DEE fairly bubbles, a surreal experiment that looks and smells like SF. But it's really a fever dream of ghetto genres, broken cliches and ultimately an elegy to the sprawl of urban LA. At first, I wanted more aliens, but everything about this is alien. Arrogant, neurotic, playful, it reads like an SF hallucination, a satire, the last thoughts of a dying man, fragments leading up to the apocalypse. 2DEE is an heir to the 1970's New Wave science fiction movement."
-- Roger Leatherwood, author of Naked in Hollywood

Genres: Science Fiction

481 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 21, 2017

About the author

Robin Wyatt Dunn lives in Los Angeles.

Reviews

[Martu Castro Vallejo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Full review on: http://inkyreviews.blogspot.com.ar/20...

I requested this book in March and only got around to reading it last week. Unfortunately, it was not what I was expecting at all.

I was drawn into it by the idea of reading dystopic/post-apocalyptic book whose main characters are a father and son. What I got instead was a city as a main character, an annoying adult, and a kid who barely appeared.

Honestly, I couldn't get past the first 100 pages. But from what I've gathered of other reviews, the rest of it is still as weird and incoherent.

My main issue with it is the writing style. It's a mix of stream of consciousness with something else I can't describe. It was too jumpy for my liking.

It is, apparently, a second book in a duology or trilogy. I don't really know. But you wouldn't be able to tell from the way this one starts. I don't think reading the first one would have made much difference. Maybe I wouldn't have been so lost with certain characters. But that's it.

The plot is all-over the place, and I just felt it was rushed for no reason.

I gave it 2 stars because, as I've said, the writing style is my main issue and that's totally personal. Otherwise, it would have been a 1 or 1 and a half book.

Rating

2 out of 5 stars

I normally am not so blunt with reviews because I don't like dis-encouraging people from reading it, but I just can't say anything nice about this one.

[Suki · Rating 2 out of 5]

I received this book as a giveaway and I feel kind of bad about not liking it. It has some good imagery and is certainly imaginative. My main problem is its lack of focus. Stream of consciousness writing needs to be tighter, more organised, otherwise it starts to rely on cliché and deus-ex-machina solutions to fill in gaps in the narrative structure and character creation. There is an attempt to explain what is going on near the end of the book, but expecting your readers to stick with you for 200+ pages of rambling is probably asking too much of anyone who isn't contractually obligated to read it.

The main character, John Dee, is a Mary-Sue anti-hero who drifts through the story without any effort, is repeatedly saved by higher powers, and usually ends up as the god-emperor-savior of every situation. The dialogue is stilted and awkward. All women throw themselves at him without preamble. It's all too cliché and sometimes borders on so-bad-it's-good territory, but not often enough.

At times the pace is far too quick. I think the story would benefit from slowing down and giving the reader time to process what is happening. I'm giving it two stars because I think there is an interesting story and enough original ideas in there to make a good novel, but they're getting lost in the noise. It needs serious editing to make the story conciser and more effective.

Summary: Recommended to people who like unusual stories.

Disclaimer: I received an advance copy of this book via LibraryThing in exchange for a fair review.

[Steve · Rating 1 out of 5]

I couldn't get past the first few pages because the writing is so bad. Completely incoherent, stream-of-consciousness type writing that is completely opaque. There are too many good books out there waiting to be read for me to waste my time on this one.

*I was given a free copy of this book through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.

[Christy Orwig · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book, I really did. I only got about a quarter of the way through and couldn't get any further. The stream of consciousness way of writing just wasn't for me. The story never seemed to go anywhere and the talking about his dead son was just too weird for me. I received this book from Library Thing for an honest review.

[Heli · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is about John Dee – a magician - his AI son and some aliens. But most of all it is a story about Los Angeles.

Writing style seems to be stream of consciousness. The story is very surreal and hard to follow. Not at all the kind of book I like to read from the sci-fi genre.

[Ricki · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like most of Dunn's work, this is a strange, twisting tale comprised of poetic prose, this time fusing dystopian with AI and aliens.

[Maurizio Codogno · Rating 2 out of 5]

I understood more or less what the plot is, but it was not easy at all. The sections in which the story goes on are sparse: in the between there is a lot of text I think is oniric (dreamy, if you prefer), but then again it may not be. Some of the characters are presented in different ways, and I could not make heads of tails of them. True, this is a sequel, as I found out; but I am not sure that even having read the first book the story would be clearer. The real leading character is actually the city of Los Angeles, and the scenes in which Dunn speaks of her are by far the one I liked most. In a nutshell, it's a book for people who like strong images rather than a well developed story.