Laith

This book took me two months to finish and it would have dragged on for much longer if not for the folks behind the audio.worm project, I regret only finding it after reading volume 30 (90% through). Before I get into this book I want to thank that group of likely insane fans for the hundreds of hours they took to read and record this behemoth. To any potential reader, I highly recommend finding the fan-made audiobook on Apple podcasts because simply finding the time to READ this whole thing was driving me insane.

This has been a constant in my life for the last two months so I'm sorry if this review runs a little long. I think for a book like this I need to change up my review format, so I will frame this as a Q&A for potential readers.

Q: What is Worm?
A: Worm was/is a superhero web serial novel published between Jan 2011 and Nov 2013, It has 30 Volumes/arcs and was published bi-weekly at a pace of around 80 pages a week. If that doesn't drop your jaw consider it like this: Wildbow was basically publishing a complete novel a month, every month, for nearly THREE YEARS. Reading this in 2023 means reading the presumably edited epub edition (though you can read this chapter by chapter for free online) with minor changes to the original story.

Q: Okay maybe I should have been more specific smartass, What is Worm about?
A: Worm is set in a world where people start getting superpowers, usually this process occurs after some type of deeply traumatic incident. The story follows Taylor Hebert, a high school student who has recently lost her mother in a car accident and is facing a targeted campaign of bullying at school. As a result of the bullying Taylor awakens a power to control all of the bugs in her vicinity and her priorities change. With the purest of intentions, Taylor dons the tights of justice only to find out that the distinction between hero and villain isn't as clear cut as she thought.

If this sounds like every other cut-and-dried superhero premise that's because it is. But Worm is something a little more, It's not obvious from the premise or the early chapters but this is the sort of superhero story cut from the same cloth as Watchmen and The Boys. Taylor's early attempts to fit herself into the mold of a hero run into a series of setbacks that erode her faith in the establishment. She opts to cross the line, adopting the monicker “Skitter”, Taylor joins a group of up-and-coming villains called the Undersiders.

But that's just the premise and early plot, what Worm is really about is escalation. This is a story about someone making all the right decisions at the moment, only to have that decision trigger an even larger crisis, rinse, and repeat until the stakes are beyond global.

Q: What makes this special, why should I read something like this?
A: A concise answer would be the intricate world-building, well-defined characters, and intricate power system. The author delves deep into the psychological and emotional aspects of being a superhero, as well as the consequences of their actions on society and themselves. The narrative is both engaging and unpredictable, filled with twists and turns that keep readers hooked.

Worm has a lot in common with traditional superhero stories, but where it excels is where it subverts the trope and convention of the genre. Characters face realistic consequences for their actions, and there is a constant sense of danger and stakes. The story also delves into themes of identity, morality, and the blurry line between good and evil. The author's willingness to explore these themes in a thought-provoking manner sets “Worm” apart from more conventional superhero stories.

There's something to be said for the medium as well, your standard superhero story has almost always existed within the pages and the conventions of comic books. Worm trades the convenience and artistry of illustrated chapters for the depth and nuance that comes with an all-text story. Every character has a backstory that gets explored, details about the world are plainly stated, and as a reader you are made aware of all of those small things that would have traditionally been hidden in panel art.

Q: Okay you've talked pros, give me some cons, what's wrong with it?
A: I want to say clearly before I dive deep and nerdy into this that If I didn't like this series I wouldn't have stuck with it to the conclusion, I wouldn't be masocistically contemplating reading the sequel either. That said there were a number of things that bothered me enough that I almost DID put the book down, and I am not sure how much of me powering through was due to Worm's overall quality and how much it was me trying to complete a challenge I'd taken on.

The early chapters suck and I knew that going in, I am under the impression that Wildbow went back while editing the epub and strengthened some of these early chapters but that doesn't really impact how good/interesting it is at the outset. Every hero and villain needs their origin story, and at this point in the novel, the story reads like most other fan fiction. It takes a while for the narrative engine of escalation to take hold in the universe; I would wager that it's not until the introduction of Coil and Dinah (nearly 4 or 5 Volumes into the series) that the story finds the beats that will continue to run throughout.

This story was published and planned piecemeal. Wildbow has stated that he would often write himself into deadends and then force himself to write back out just to keep the tension of the narrative going; after all, if even the author doesn't know where this is going how can the reader know? I'm sure that this piecemeal approach allowed the story to benefit from reader feedback in real-time, and to his credit, there is a significant amount of tension surrounding key moments in the story so it's a partial success. But not having a planned story really fucks with the flow of this book, the pacing is all over the place, there are time skips and the additions of whole hosts of never before seen heroes, and the backstory has been delivered in donation-driven interludes that breakup this already gasping story even further.

Another consequence of working from a rough or non-existent outline is that your story runs the risk of losing the reader even at the best of times. There are whole volumes in Worm that I cannot riddle the meaning or significance of, some revelations are buried in detail-rich text and leave you scratching your head for hours of storytime. We never get a consistent villain and the world continues to evolve and confound with each twist. When Wildbow is on the ball this is the most exhilarating part of reading the book, but the quality is not consistent chapter by chapter.

Q: Anything else I need to know?
A: Worm is exciting, varied, and endlessly complex. Just reading the wiki could entertain you for hours and hours. The peaks are high and the valleys are low. I thought that reading the edited epub compilation would mean that I would skip over some of those valleys but I was wrong. Do not go into this book expecting to read something that's been run through with a fine tooth comb, expect some ends to remain loose, and for developments to be nonsensical or even cartoonish. All things told though this is a superhero book at its heart and it's okay to be all of those things.

I really wish that Wildbow had sat down and read this whole series over and just went to town with the red pen. I see no reason why the retail publication had to be the same as the web publication, warts, and all. This could have been a 3,000-page, 4 or 5 Volume box set, and I am positive that all of these arcs could have been condensed into 6-800 page books. Portions of the plot could have been reworked, interludes brought into the primary narrative, and foreshadowing could have been added retroactively. There is so much potential in here and this is not the publishing release I would have hoped for.

I want to talk about fanfic for just a second as well. There is such a City of Heroes RP vibe coming off of this book and I don't know if it's intentional or just a consequence of writing a scenario like this to begin with. I don't say that to put anyone off, but if you're thinking of picking this up you should know that there is a whole fanfic universe that surrounds Worm, lots of readers who write in this universe. Obviously, I am not a contemporary reader but some of the unexplained gaps and surprise characters seemed to be Wildbow folding in some of those fanfic stories and heroes. I could be wrong on that point so don't quote me.

I wouldn't pick this up unless you have some time to kill, all the reviews that say this is nectar from the gods are from serious nerds that have probably already read more comics than everyone you know put together and have been dying for more content. Worm is good, even great at times but there are so many better ways to spend your time. If Wildbow ever comes back to this volume I hope he really considers a partial rewrite and some serious consolidation. I enjoyed this book a lot but I would not recommend something like this to 99% of the people that I know, it just isn't in a state that invites someone to read it.

I have difficulty believing this book was over 500 pages because it went by in a flash. Some litRPGs kind of cheat by spamming the status screen every other chapter to pad out the page count, but that's not what's happening here. I consider this a significant improvement over the first entry in the series, a lot of the issues I had with the balance of the narrative and the overall characterization have been addressed or wallpapered over in some way. It's still not perfect, and it is guilty of bulldozing past the issues of the first book, but if the series had started like this, I think I'd be stoked on it.

This picks up right after Book 1, and it kind of veers off into kingdom builder territory for a while as Jason consolidates his bounty from the previous book. This entry is different from the first in that it introduces, or rather re-introduces, previous side characters into Jason's party. The theme and focus this time is the party, we're establishing the relationship between these characters and discovering the importance of friendship.


Characterization was a big weakness of the first entry, I'm glad to say that this book is much closer to the neutral baseline this time around. The characters may have started off seriously flawed, but I think one of the goals of the book is to reflect changes in their behavior/character as they continue to play the game. That's kind of what is going on here, Jason's character is about a thousand times less violent and edgy than he is in the first, and we can chalk it up to the events of the first/effects of the helmet changing him for the better (No more wholesale slaughter of cities, Jason's a good boy now). It might feel like kind of a large scale change, but it's for the better, so I'm going to look past how complete of a change it is.

Alex also improves dramatically a foil, a lot of this is really just because he actually gets the whole book's worth of introduction sections. He's still fairly weak as a character, but this book does a much better job as we continue to get his backstory and there are much more (more than the zero in the first) passages directly from his perspective. I think my problem with Alex is that he's neither sympathetic nor fearsome, he's kind of more like... evil toilet paper with a tragic backstory. There's not enough context to why he's a threat (outside some fairly blasé bullying and being a 1%er douche) and we already saw him get his ass kicked in book 1. I am surprised that the side story after this book wasn't one for him specifically.

This is a cleaning house kind of book for the most part, I would describe it as tweaking the foundation before possibly letting the story finally rip? There's a touch of second book syndrome here, there's a big focus on development, but ultimately the narrative has progressed satisfyingly enough. The ending of this book is probably the best part (if a little sudden and a major cliffhanger), it seems like maybe book three is going to seriously advance the story outside the game and that's a storyline that I am interested in. This is getting a 3 just like the first, but this is closer to a 3.5.

TL;DR: Skeleton boy gets some friends and that fixes all the problems in his personality. 3.5/5

Book Club for Jan,I'm just going to admit right off the top that this one lost me. I feel stupid for not getting it. Maybe this was too smart for me, too deconstructed. But it isn't deconstructed, and maybe I am wrong and simply doubling down in my ignorance, but this isn't all that smart either. The Shining Girls seemed extremely promising at the outset, here's this very well researched glimpse into 1930s Chicago that leads into a time travel murder-thriller-mystery. This is a book about Harper, a psycho vagrant from the 1930s who stumbles upon a magic time traveling house. After murdering its owner, he explores the house only to feels like he's been in there before. He discovers a trademark psycho-killer room upstairs, there he finds photos of young women and shining pieces of memorabilia connected by lines carved, drawn, and stained into the walls. The house is his vehicle, his mission is to murder all the shining girls across time while sprinkling collectibles at the crime scene. It all goes pretty good at first, he taunts the young version of the women, giving them each a gift he'll come back for. But he messes up, he doesn't kill Kirby. She survives his attack and begins investigating him at her Chicago Sun internship. I can tell that Lauren Beukes is a talented author, I can't write this entire book off. This seems to be pretty well researched from the Chicago perspective, Mayor Donovan (Read Klayton) was a nice touch to the Randolph street Hooverville. There's actually a surprising amount of visual detail in here, particularly where it concerns the descriptions of the shining girls as Harper sees them. But that's about all the praise I can muster; there is a breakdown in the story the closer we approach the core of the narrative. I wish that I knew how every detail connected up, the fact that I can't even try has me questioning myself. Maybe it's in here, an explanation? A satisfying conclusion? Something that can justify an ending that reeks of toast. I couldn't tell you what happens at the end of this story. I mean, I can, Kirby gets tipped off that some menacing guy is asking after her. Showcasing some uncharacteristic wile, she stalks Harper back to the time travel house and sneaks in with enabler/mentor/admirer Dan after the police search and find nothing but crack house. Dan fights Harper in 1929 while Kirby burns all the shining memorabilia and splatters Harpers brains on the carpet when he returns to the house to stop her.. But the ending explains nothing. Why do the girls shine? Why is house magic? Who is Harper? Nothing. This book ends like oh-s0-many thrillers, with the protagonist defeating the villain, just without any of the catharsis or satisfaction of unraveling the mystery. Most time travel books really work their asses off to explain the function of time travel in their universe, or at least they try to get the reader to understand the role that time travel will play in the larger narrative beyond simply existing. We have time travel here, and for the first third it's just a big whatever! So much of the early parts of this book are just like “here's a thing” or “here's a brutal murder” and then the page turns, and it means nothing because now we're in 1989 and following a completely different character and narrative thread. I'm all for a puzzling read, but it has to unravel eventually!I read this right after [b:Recursion 42046112 Recursion Blake Crouch https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1543687940l/42046112.SY75.jpg 64277987] so it's very apparent to me that there is some genre confusion going on here. The balance in the SF-Thriller formula is not being respected, this is a thriller that just glosses over its SF elements and not a complete melding of concepts. I'm not saying that the formula is fixed and that you can't alter the ratio, movies the like the Lake house prove that you can designate your non-SF elements as the focus and still tell a compelling story. The problem in The Shining Girls is that there is just too much of the story wrapped up in the non-mystery/thriller aspects. To end the book without resolving those threads is to present us with a book that is undercooked.I know that I said I can't write the whole book off, but I am close. Those Chicago history moments? They read like they came out of a history book, honestly, for as accurate as the portrayal of Chicago was, it rang inauthentic and scripted (As the acknowledgements illuminate: the setting comes from some haunted city tours). I haven't even touched on the characters: Dan, her journalist mentor with a big time crush that just robs him of agency (Please Dan, can I investigate these 80-year-old murders on company time? I know we're supposed to cover the cubs, but they'll be irrelevant until 2016 fluttering lashes). Kirby herself is mostly an impression in my mind, a collection of scars and crazy ideas that the story describes as charming; she's an extremely jaded individual. The problem is that all of her life experience is being backfilled as a way to excuse or explain her poor social skills. I am not a fan, the formula seems to be: Kirby talks to someone, Kirby feels awkward, or the conversation sucks, Kirby does or says something out of pocket or awkward, and then we get a page or two about how much it sucked to have her throat slit. I'm sure that experience scars you (in more ways than one) but we're with her after a multi-year time skip and there's not enough context for the reader to excuse these quirks of her character. That applies to everyone in this book; It felt like a lot of the initial development/establishing of the cast was covered with a coat of gloss. Avery, our limping time travelling psycho, is just that, a collection of keywords and phrases. He does stuff all book long without any rhyme or reason, he has major character moments only for them to read like filler because of how little we know about his inner machinations. I did not like this book, and I feel a little short-changed. The entire book is saying, “Read me! I'm smart and complex and mysterious! It'll all pay off, just keep going!” only to not pay off and not be anything but complicated for the sake of complication. This was extremely well received in 2013, and those media rights went straight to DiCaprio. Did other people get this? Am I wrong here? They made a show out of this! Where is the appeal!

This was another book I read on a recommendation and wound up enjoying more than I thought I would. Discworld has always been a bit of an intimidating series to me so I was a little hesitant to pick this up on my own. First of all, it's sprawling, there are 41 entries, something like 5 or 6 different storylines, and a reading order that gives me a headache. More importantly, it's foundational, this is a series that apparently everyone but me has read and loved, it parodies and has been parodied in a million other works- and here I was, worried it might read a little dated, and then I'd be the only person I know that doesn't like Discworld.

Thankfully my worries were unfounded; The Color of Magic is like reading a rollercoaster. This book was only 228 pages but I had to take my time with it because almost every page had something insanely interesting and imaginative on it. Rincewind and Twoflower are a whirlwind that tears through the Discworld, at such a breakneck pace that I had to take a moment to remind myself of the setting and context with every new development. I can safely say that I was never once bored reading this, and if I find out that someone was, I would strongly recommend they donate their body to science. That said, the pacing is definitely a double-edged sword, I could totally see some readers being put off by the sheer volume of insane developments and the sudden changes in setting/plot/narration/universe.

Every time this series has come up in conversation (usually they're Brits) it's always been something along the lines of, “This is such a killer series, I absolutely devoured it as a kid.” I'm jealous! I wish so desperately that someone had plopped this book down in front of me as a wee lad, I think that I would have dropped everything and finished the series given the chance. As an adult, the humor agrees with me, and I really enjoyed the non-conformity of the story structure. For a young and impressionable mind, it's books like this that are the kind to really open a door, and for me in particular this could have been something akin to The Animorphs or Harry Potter.

I'll definitely work my way through the rest of the Rincewind storylines, and I am keen to read Mort as well!

Book Club For December.

Do you remember the first time you listened to Zeppelin III? Maybe 13 seconds into Immigrant Song, you were like “THIS SHIT ROCKS!” and then proceeded to reach musical nirvana? That's this book. Like holy crap, I didn't even know I wanted a story like this, but here it is! A Rock/Metal themed Fantasy adventure; some bards, bands, and battles. We've got a nicely put together fantasy world and some veteran characters to guide us along a fantastical journey. It's the First Law but written by Terry Pratchett with music by Led Zepplin. There's actually a Spotify playlist to accompany this book, and if you're reading this (as opposed to listening) I think it's kind of mandatory. (The audiobook is narrated by Jeff Harding and is excellent, so that's another valid choice)

This book was previously on my radar, but I skipped it. I must have been judging books by their covers at the time (the cover does bear a striking resemblance to Gwyne or Abercrombie at first glance) and I was under the mistaken impression that this was yet another grimdark story. Rest assured, dear reader, this is not grimdark. What this book is: a high energy high fantasy rollick; a weird but kick-ass mishmash of Andy Weir, Guns n' Roses, Conan, and Rimworld. This book is about “Saga” the world's greatest mercenary band that's been ten years retired. We follow Clay “Slowhand” Cooper and Saga's frontman “Golden” Gabe as they work to reunite the band to bring Saga out of retirement for one last mission: Saving Gabe's daughter Rose, who is trapped in the under siege city of Castia.

If I haven't given it away yet, this book is decidedly Metal, at least to me. The mercenary bands are this world's analog for our Rock/Metal bands. I guess Rock is more the more ubiquitous label, but I just kept getting a serious Metalocalpyse vibe from characters like Ganelon the axe wielding warrior who's spent the last ten years trapped in stone, Larkspur the black winged Daeva with DID and/or head trauma, really every character in the band rocks. I think that's why I liked this so much, it's kind of like a novelized Metalocalypse (which for my money was the best thing Adult Swim was making in the 00s) with less “heavy” in its flavor of metal and the “fantasy” knob is turned to 11. This book was really playing to its demo in my case, and if the reception to this debut is any indication, I am not alone in thinking this combo was Metal as fuck.

On the subject of music, I don't want to make this review nothing but me calling out the references, but I need to address this point somehow. This work is Referential, capital R; EVERY character is a reference, EVERY location is a reference. Honestly, pick a detail, and you will find it referencing a band, a song, a line in a song, or something else entirely (I'm 90% sure there's a Final Fantasy 7 spinning away transition reference). I'm not knocking this aspect of the book- I was grinning ear to ear when I realized that the villain, Duke Lastleaf, is a White Duke era Bowie reference- but I can see this wearing on some readers. I mentioned Andy Weir at the top and this is what I was talking about, there are just so many references that it seems like Eames read The Martian and then tried to do the same thing just in Azeroth but then realized he had to name everything from scratch. In all likelihood, the average reader isn't going to catch all but the most obvious of these references and given the decided “rock fantasy” theme here, all the people/places/things aren't at all out of place or jarring.

Beyond the referential nature of this book, there is a really stunning world paired with an entertaining and jaunty yet emotionally grounded story that takes its time showing you how its insane universe functions. I was so surprised to learn that this was a debut because I really felt like I was in the hands of a veteran author with how steady and confident the pace of the book was. I came to love the characters, and while some of the dialogue was a little corny, I think that there's a certain point where you get what this book is trying to do, and you are either on board and in the spirit of things, or you are a reluctant passenger missing the forest for the trees.

Let's talk about rollicks for a second because that's kind of where I am torn on this book, I don't usually care for stories like this. A rollicking adventure is a lively, typically light-hearted or low stakes, humorous journey. A lot of things fall under the umbrella of a “rollick”, it's not always swashbuckling pulp or fierce barbarian warriors a-la Conan but more often than not I find that a lot of books like this tend to fall victim to the “make-em-up” criticism. Things always wind up working out! The dragon turns out to have a toothache, the earth was made in a factory, and they happen to have back-ups, etc. For a while there, it seemed like a lot of popular Fantasy stories were forced into a happy ending framework; even stories that took themselves fairly seriously fell victim to fantastical deus ex machina endings and story beats that undercut character progression.

Maybe there's been a little bit of an over correction. We're the spoiled generation that gets to read 5/7th of A song of Ice and Fire and as much Abercrombie as we can consume before traumatizing ourselves. I don't want to come off like a self serious fuddy-duddy, there are rollicks I have enjoyed: Hitchhiker's Guide is the prime example. It's smart, it's funny, it's absurd and unpredictable, and somehow it's still so relatable that you can't help buy into the ridiculous story. On the whole I get the criticism, I wouldn't apply it to Fantasy writ large, but hey there sure are a lot of fantasy rollicks that just fall apart at the end (especially in YA). Thankfully, Kings of the Wyld doesn't confuse a light-hearted tone as a license to tell a weak or uncompelling story. Honestly, some of the themes and character moments are pretty heavy, and it made it a lot easier to push through some of the heavier chapters when you could think back to a sword fight double entendre or other moment of levity.

This book managed to sell me on a world where cool shit is constantly happening, it convinced me that it rocks without pause. There is a whole universe of books that don't take themselves too seriously and are fantastic, and I am 100% on board with books like that, books like Kings of the Wyld.