Jak

My friend Ian gifted this to me a while back (Xmas 2022) but I only just now started it. Didn't realize it was originally published in 1985, and this is a 20yr re-release edition. Even then, this edition is itself nearly 20 years old. Was a bit of a hard read, even though it was fairly short. I kept on putting it down for weeks or months at a time, then would pick it back up and read another couple of chapters. I disagreed with large swaths of the book, but found other parts interesting or oddly prescient of the current media landscape. All in all I'd say this was a very thought-provoking book, though most of the time the thoughts it provoked were ones of disagreement.

Difficult read, very frustrating. Felt deliberately confusing at times. The book is purely just a transcript between two characters, with zero punctuation in McCarthy's usual style. While this can work for his other books, where there's actual narration, in a book that's purely just back-and-forth dialogue, it made it extremely easy to get mixed up with who was talking. I honestly didn't understand why he chose to do it this way. As a stylistic choice, it doesn't make any sense; there's a note at the very beginning explaining that this is a transcript of various voice recordings from interviews between a doctor and a patient, but in real life, even transcripts have various notes about non-spoken audio elements in the recording. This had none of that, it was PURELY dialogue, with various things like tone or 'off-screen' actions (like someone breaking down and crying) having to be inferred from extremely vague context clues. Also, I'm pretty sure the copy I was reading might've had a typo, in the sense that a certain piece of dialogue didn't have a line break in the proper spot, so it completely threw me for a loop about who-was-saying-what. Upon finishing, I also read some stuff that made it seem like I'm missing out by not reading the other companion novel, but with how frustrating this was to read, I don't have any desire to do so any time soon. Overall felt like a chore to read. However, I did enjoy some of the sections of dialogue, especially the bits about the nature of madness, and the various implications about the doctor's personal life that aren't directly stated.

Got this based on various positive things I heard about it. Was a bit weird to get a copy of...he's a self-published author, and he's not on Amazon, so I ended up getting it through the Google Play store and reading the ebook version on the iOS book app, not Kindle. Interesting read, definitely, though pretty difficult to understand what's happening a lot of the time, owing to the author's constant use of outdated terminology and lack of context provided for any of the more fantastical elements. Not to mention various character interactions described through layered metaphors rather than straightforward prose. But still, an interesting take on military sci-fi, or rather, "military fantasy". Ending was a little weak, I felt, but it packed in a lot of world-building and somewhat-explanation for certain things.

Took a bit to get into this one, twice-over. I wasn't thrilled with the characters in the first bit, but grew to like them as the plot accelerated and got more interesting. There were bits of story that I didn't care for, like how certain details or events just happened off-screen and were relayed afterward. But overall the first story arc resolved somewhat satisfyingly. The second part, set 5k years later, also took a bit to get into, but steadily got more interesting. I feel it ended a bit too soon, right as things were getting interesting?

Bought this from Amazon a while back, since I liked the first one. Finally got around to reading it. A few of the scenarios I had already seen from the blog, but most of them were new to me and somewhat interesting.