Pokemon: The Origin of Species

Updated, Dec 17

So I finally finished this book. And it's fine, but it's clearly written as a serial. And like all serials, it is desperately in need of being edited. Being edited down to 350 pages—plausibly two 350 page books if you're feeling generous.

Instead it's something like 1.3 million words — nearly three times the length of War and Peace.

The problem is that there's just so many wasted words. Let's talk spoilers. There's some girl Aiko who shows up for like 500 pages, who then just dies, and it's a HUGE PLOT DEVICE. But it's hard to care because she's not a good character. And then some other girl just waltzes in and lives the dead girl's life. Like, living in her room, sleeping in her bed, hanging out with her dad, doing her chores. Why the hell is this two characters?

And then this girl doesn't have anything to do for the rest of the book. But she's still around, kinda doing her own thing. And then the main character's mom's subplot gets subtended by this girl without any closure on either side.

And then there's a big Mewtwo subplot, which is more interesting than the actual plot. But then Mewtwo escapes and that's the end of that. There are no repercussions to the story, and we never hear from him again.

THE WHOLE BOOK IS LIKE THAT. Some interesting bits that are hard to care about because almost none of it turns out to be relevant.There are glorious moments in this book, but they're nowhere near worth the price of admission.

—

Updated, November 11, 2023.

HOW AM I STILL READING THIS? I THOUGHT I ABANDONED IT.

I'm now 2500 pages in, and while it has gotten much more interesting, it's still not great. I think I just don't have enough on my kindle right now, and so it wins by default. And since it's not finished, I never remember to add more books to it until it's too late.

Vicious cycle.

Nevertheless, given that I've been reading this every day for half the year, I'm going to count it twice for my reading goal.

—

Abandoned. I made it 600 pages in, and while it was getting better, I wasn't enthralled. Maybe someone who likes pokemon more than I do would get more out of it.