Matthew Meade > Recent Status Updates

So far, so good. A fun heist story with interesting characters in a low-magic fantasy world. Believable intrigue, various powerful factions vying for control. Well crafted and interesting tale, so far.

Strong Annihilation vibes.
Big Arrival influence.

Clear Frankenstein influence (epistolary form. The ice.)

The main character keeps going, "Clementine? You mean Dr. Bernice Clementine, the most renowned biological climatologist on earth?" It's getting a bit tiresome.

Also, this feels sort of like Annihilation meets Arrival / "Story of your Life."

So… we are supposed to mourn the loss of clippy and !helpdesk? Da fuck?

A new big bad introduce. Day.
Wiping out computers is the same as genocide? Throwing out a computer is murder? This is assinine.

… and then…. And then… and then…

Big bad introduced on page 250. Dead by 257.

The only interesting part of this book is where arnold tries to bang MAL. Too bad it’s played as a deus ex machina

Mal is trans but this isnt explored at all .

There is no consistency to the Mal character. He tells Kaylee he would never hirt her and then offers to strangle her. He doesn’t understand what people are saying even though he has watched hours of tv. It is all based on what is the most convenient for the author.

The author and Mal both drool over weaponry like the punisher. Tanks and guns are objects if desire.

Liberal power fantasy. Ends justify the means nonsense with zero ethical explorations. Pedantic bullshit that is No different than Lee Child or Tom Clancy.

Holy shit. The main characters are all so insufferable. “Im done!” They shout and beat their little fists.

The antagonists are far more interesting. The humanists. How could anyone root for rowan amd kaylie?

The books is as naive as one might expect for a book with “war” in the title. It’s a power fantasy along the lines if jack reacher or jack ryan except with left leaning clothes. Liberals are just as suseptible to this as comservatives

Mall has watched serial dramas? It’s kind of cute that the author thinks his work is mor sophisticated than Gossip girl.

When characters give a speech about how sad they are and how victimized they’ve been, they always self-righteously and rhetorically say, “you get that right?”

I hate any book where the word “flashes/ flashed” is used synonymously with the word “remember”

A redneck sheriff who may as well be J. W. Pepper walks into the story, calls everyone son and boy and refers to himself as a stereotype. Just the worst, most lazy pandering.

A book with the guts to ask bold questions like:

What if Neuromancer sucked?

What if Terry Pratchet wrote a book that was aggressively unfunny?

The dialog is incompetent.

She is so entitled. Wants everyone to do things for her. Customer (kay) gets he coffee. Simon guves her free coffe. Uncle supports her. Ex supports her. Even her cat she expects to deal with issues. What a fucking asshole.

i like the boatman
i like that she is linked to Uncle Earl by the knee injury
i like that they come back to the "real world" at the halfway point instead of the whole book being about their journey back.

I don't like that the prose is so full of cliches
Everything is "terror so terrifying, the word terrifying didn't even approach how terrifying it was."
The writing is very self-congratulatory . The character chuckles at how funny she is. Simon often remarks "I'm not creative enough to come up with this..."
A "your momma" "joke" where the joke is that Simon just says, "yo momma joke?"

This main character is absolutely insufferable. An entitled, whining, unfunny asshole. Just the worst.

I like that they came back from the other place halfway through. Some writers might have kept them there to the end.

Things I Like:

Sturdivan having a Southern accent, the reference to kudzu, implying he is from someplace like where they are from. All of this could be about her self-loathing and hatred/ fear of the south?
The reveal of Sturdivan's guts
the notion that anger will save you from thinking about THEM; her old teacher (southerner) and her ex-husband. The old her?
The possibility that Simon will end up like Sturdivan

The book is absolutely absent any tension whatsoever.