tiggum's reviews
726 reviews

I HATE this book. I'm absolutely certain that a really good book could have been written about these events and circumstances, so it's an absolute tragedy that this one was instead.

This book lacks any kind of structure or coherence. It jumps forward and backward through time, between different topics and narratives, from person to person, seemingly without rhyme or reason. It is impossible to follow any sequence, keep track of any individual, or place any event in time. The book reads like it was cut into pieces and pasted back together random.

The author injects his opinions and prejudices into the book frequently and obnoxiously, and makes no distinction between established fact and wild conjecture. The most egregious example is the entire chapter about Charles Nicolle's research in the early twentieth century leading to Hongoltz-Hetling's completely baseless theory that Toxoplasma gondii may be responsible, to some unspecified degree, for the behaviour of some or all of the bears and humans involved. It's pure speculation but presented almost as fact.

And each chapter begins with a quotation about bears, or that mentions bears, or that just has the word "bear" in it. These quotations don't relate to the subject of the chapter, nor to anything else that I could see. They're just there because the author liked them, I guess.

This book is infuriatingly bad. It should not exist.

I wanted to see where this was going. I really did. But I just couldn't do it. Listening to this dumb motherfucker; this "dark enlightenment" shithead; this arrogant wanker who thinks he invented philosophy and mastered science when he doesn't know the first thing about either; I couldn't do it. I cannot read another word.

I can't tell if the author thinks like this guy or if he just wrote an entirely believable character, but the character is unbearable. All the more so for apparently living in a universe where his extremely stupid ideas are all true. This is wish fulfilment fantasy of the highest order for every 14-year-old who just discovered Jordan Peterson and atheism.

And it goes on. And on. And on. It's one unending stream of consciousness from this idiot who thinks he's the the first one to think about anything and that actually it is everyone else who is stupid. Fucking hell.

The very premise of this book drained my will to read it.

Pretentious rambling nonsense.

You know there's a "twist" coming and you know it's going to be dumb but you're still disappointed when you get to it.

Just boring. Even the narrator seems to be bored.

Pointless, meandering, repetitive.

The setting and plot are really good (up until right near the end) but the characters are shit. I didn't like any of them and didn't care if they lived or died - which is problem when their survival is the entire basis for the story's stakes.

The other problem with the book is that it ends like a Marvel movie - with a big, dumb fight that means nothing. It's even got bosses with glowing weak points.

The good aspects of this book reminded me of the TV show From. Unfortunately the author felt the need to explain too much (especially towards the end) and the characters sucked. Watch From instead.

I don't even know what the fuck this is. Incomprehensible garbage.

This book did absolutely nothing for me. I find it difficult to even describe because it made no impact at all.