When you previously had a stellar experience with an author’s work, you’re naturally going to compare everything else he writes with that initial book, or in this case, books. I’m a big fan of the “John Dies at the End” series, or JDATE, for short. As I read each of those I went on an adventure with well crafted characters I cared about and found myself astounded by the brilliant twists and turns of the story. I also appreciated the laugh out loud humor throughout.

This one was….very different. I hate to give Pargin a bad rating in general, but I just didn’t enjoy this book and had a hard time even finishing it. (More on that, later.) So I have to be honest. The basic concept is interesting and sounds like a fun, wild ride, but instead the story was just stressful, too steeped in political ranting and populated by characters that were nearly impossible to like. (*I don’t hide from politics in art, but I generally don’t seek them out when I’m trying to decompress or be entertained, is what I’m saying!)

I’m going to try to keep this part short, but my biggest problem was the main character, Abbott. I think he’s meant to be the primary protagonist, but he’s actual garbage. A woman-hating Incel, (*the book’s word, not mine*), a lot of his dialogue consists of long, volatile diatribes. It’s very difficult to go along on this journey with him. It’s a very different experience than JDATE, where the characters have flaws for sure but they’re still worth rooting for in the end. In those books the characters are self-proclaimed assholes, but at times they can be assholes with hearts of gold despite themselves. Abbott is insufferable. It got to a point where whenever I saw that he had an entire paragraph of dialogue, I skipped over it. Do I do this often with books? Hardly ever. His partner for the roadtrip, a girl named Ether, was also sometimes working my last nerve but I think she was designed that way. And she at least had redeeming qualities. (But oh boy, was she chatty!)

There are moments in their journey when, despite his personality and extreme anxiety, Abbott just can’t HELP but assist strangers, including women. I was not buying it. Especially since this was sandwiched around the scenes of Abbott in the car spewing hateful rhetoric at Ether for pages worth of dialogue. He wasn’t learning to be a better person, and there was not a better person lurking somewhere underneath. As I stated before with JDATE, the author absolutely knows how to write layered characters though. What was the point of Abbott? He wasn’t funny or charming. The anxiety was relatable at first, but he lost me with the whining. Did I buy the possibility that he was even capable of a character arc? Sadly, no. Maybe I’m being too harsh and unforgiving. Wicked sad, I hate that for me.

The read eventually became tedious. If Abbott wasn’t ranting about everything being awful then Ether was going on and on for pages about nonsense that I didn’t care about. I wasn’t invested Commentokay, I did), but I figured I should at least see the resolution. I was left with an empty feeling.

What did Pargin do well here? Good mock-ups of Reddit posts, usernames, etc. (A Hellscape, basically.) Although, I think that adding typos to the posts would have made them even more realistic. Abbott is a Twitch streamer and my personal experience as a participant in the chat rooms on that app is very different from the one depicted in this book, but I also mainly watch content creators who are funny, creative and amazing and most of them are also part of the LGBTQA+ community so that makes a big difference. Pargin did a decent job of portraying the frightening mob mentality of humanity. This is a very political book. It’s about the stupidity of internet trolls, about letting negativity and fear (and pessimistic media) control your life. Oddly enough, it’s also about how you can never fully tell who the good guys and the bad guys are just by their appearance. I liked that one. (I’m sorry to keep harping on this, but I think Abbott was the worst character even at the end of the book and so were his followers.)

I still think Pargin is very creative and has a great sense of humor, but personally I recommend reading the JDATE books.

Biggest TW: Suicide, Substance abuse, Domestic terrorism, Incel ranting, Sexism, Mention of animal harm, Mention of child harm