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This thing is 90% rambling, just a jumble of the characters telling you how they feel and think about vague ideas. All the stuff you aren’t supposed to do in fiction.

I figured out why this book is so bloated. The author will often use to or more metaphors to explain the same goddamn thing. What the hell was the editor doing?

I’m almost 30% of the way through and while I’m pushing through it, I wish the author would get on with the plot. It has its moments, but it amazes me how many words can be spent saying very little. I thought this was supposed to be about revolutionaries?

“My face won’t show up on surveillance feeds. Visual gets warped.”

“Why’ve they got that reserved just for military folks? I need that for all the cursed paparazzi,” she grumbled.

I smiled sympathetically. “That’s not how it works. Cam-bots and security cams aren’t the same thing.”

Hmmmm. Maybe they should use cam-bots for security, then?????

“On the other hand, Le Guin avoids the experience of being a person of color. She puts [Ged] in a world where his race causes him zero trouble. This is a moral stance. … The novel, intentionally or not, puts forward the idea that everything is up to free will, even for people of color…”

That’s quite a take.

So far, this has been a fascinating read. And while many of these discussions of culture are essential for writers, I wonder what difference it will make for those of us hoping to publish. I can break all the Western, colonialist rules of craft I want, but if it ruins my chances of being published in a Western market, I'm only hurting myself.

“It [the Museum of Natural History] was a special place. Before they tore it down for an Amazon warehouse.”

This novel has two Honey Baked Hams for fists.

“I got it with nothing. Just my hard work. I started with jack shit, only a couple hundred million from my father and a snack company as an inheritance.”

That’s the kind of subtlety you can expect here.

The man squinted. “They used to have rules back in my day.”

“What day was that?”

“The good old days.”

Scintillating dialogue.

“Some tech baron named Peter Coin from Silicon Valley, way back when it was a valley and not a manmade libertarian island in tax-free international waters powered by floating mini nuke plants.”

Help, it just keeps going like this.

“red-faced pundits screamed about illegal immigrants with genetically enhanced lungs”

This is the kind of radical insight you can expect from this book. The future might be dire, but does it have to be so boring and uninsightful?

This book has a lot of the hallmarks of what I dislike in cyberpunk. The world-building has a total lack of subtlety and everybody, including the one-off characters, is cartoonishly cynical and rude. It makes for dull reading. On the plus side, most of the genetic and technological body enhancements are creative.

It's a risky move, making your novel revolve around esoteric subjects like baseball. As a reader, I had to weigh whether I wanted to spend time reading a genre I love (cyberpunk) dealing with a sport I find tedious. Not only do I not enjoy baseball, I resent having to learn more about it.

But I'm pressing forward.