attackrat's reviews
176 reviews

This book was so fun. The film adaptation is insanely close to the original, which is a testament to its timeless humor. Fezzic and Inigo have just the right amount of character exploration, and aside from the occasional “I hate my b*tch wife” energy the romance is sickeningly sweet. 

But they drop a slur for literally no reason so it won’t be going any higher than this. 

The most precious, sweet, heartfelt story. Loved this. 

This had such a strong start and is extremely creative. I loved so much about this book, from the way it treated characters to the ideas it weaved together. It did lose out on pacing about halfway through and started to rush itself, but I still thought this was really solid and I’m excited to read more by Nicky Drayden. 

This was insane, and beautiful, and at points very hard to go through. I didn’t expect it to break my heart as much as it did, nor did I expect to be so thoroughly moved. 

This book spent exactly the time it needed to, developed and paced itself extremely well, and maintained intrigue and thrill throughout. I wish certain small points had been further elaborated on, but overall this book was very good and i’ll be thinking about it for a long time.

Someone give this to Christopher Nolan, he would love it. 

If this book had been honest about itself from the start, it might have been solid. But the issue I couldn’t get over is this: the entire synopsis is about octopus, and their foray into language. But the actual exploration of that concept occurs in maybe 40 pages of this 452 page book, and the rest is unrelated cyber-future consciousness rambling. Which I like usually. But because I was expecting something else entirely, and the book barely elaborated on its titular subject, I was extremely disappointed by this. By the end I could see how things connected and understood why there is more portrayed than just the octopus but there is still not enough. Why would you promise a story like this and come up with a creative concept if you do not feel like exploring it in depth or giving it the wonder it deserves?

It also in general did not dive deep enough into any of its subjects. There were multiple ideological points brought up and almost discussed, but then at the last second the author back off from actually making a point. It was maddening.

And lastly, there is no actual suspense in this book. Jeff Vandermeer blurbed this book, of course my standards were high. But it was just a series of cliche chapter cliffhangers that don’t build anything, just frustrate and elude. At multiple points the “item of suspense” was just the author saying something might happen later and then us having to wait. Like okay??? It was written in a matter-of-fact and (imo) bland way, refusing to engage with itself or participate in storytelling rather than explaining. 

TLDR: This promised something that it did not deliver, and constantly stood on the precipice of being unique and interesting. But what it is in reality is a creative concept wrapped up in lackluster writing and derivative philosophies on consciousness that never actually went anywhere. 

this is perfect. accurate and beautiful loser-gamer with a cat representation 

This was a kind of interesting take on some characters we didn’t get much of in the games, but there’s kind of a lot going on with not much explanation. It did not feel very cohesive.