Phil Santiago

Coinciding with a return to a Survivor era of my life, I received this book a couple months into 2025 after pre-ordering it last year. I rarely pre-order books, but Stephen Fishbach promised me more "Blood in the Clocktower" YouTube videos if I did that, but as the show that popularized him taught me: trust nobody.

I can praise Escape! as being a page-turner. Fischbach commits to escalation of plot and introduces a varied enough cast of characters with potential arcs you'll want to see close out, much like Survivor does. He has flashes of damn good writing, particularly in the final act when his characters are really pushed into moments of existential reflection.

But it's important to see this as something of an absurdist plot and I wonder how it will play to people who haven't been following pop culture discussion of "the edit" or even to fans of reality TV that don't follow survival shows. At times it feels like Fishbach gave in to a thought exercise and the conclusion feels like something unearthed rather than purposefully crafted. Still, a good airplane read, as I made significant progress on a five-hour flight.

This book has an interesting conceit in that Diaz can escape accusations of overwriting the first part, because the author of that piece is a different character. And he can escape accusations of submitting half-finished work, because there's an in-universe reason for that. And he can escape accusations of engaging in weird conspiratorial fantasy about the Great Depression, because Obama takes him seriously.

Anyway, the third part was probably my favorite in that this is the actual plot. But I probably would have been satisfied with an entire book written like the first part? Seemed like he was channeling Ann Patchett there.