Worm

I'd have trouble finding something that's blown me away as much as Worm has.
Does it transcend art, offer profound observations on the world, come to some conclusion nobody's reached before? No.
Is it a tremendously well-crafted, emotional, soft and touching yet brutal and visceral exercise in escalation, atonement, and balance? 100%.

I began Worm once eight years ago, and got through one chapter before quitting. I hesitated beginning Worm this time because I'd heard some horror stories about how dark and depressing it was. Vicious, complex, and gray, yes, but not dark or nihilistic. Wildbow's tone reminds me most of Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time - a supportive narrative style that can elevate and attempt to convince you of even the most horrible actions and people, even without abject justification. There's an almost heartbreaking interlude about three-quarters of the way through when he tells the story of one of the book's most horrific villains. The chances he gives his characters as people is almost too generous, their interpretations open. This suspension of morality in a fantasy world, yet a self-aware search for objective morality being the axial focus of the book, is the true genius of Worm.

Taylor Hebert - not my favorite character, but oh boy, does she work as a narrator. There are so many possible reviews you could write just about Taylor, from the way she grows her power to her progression from a bullied past to a confident cape. With one notable exception, the other characters operate on a plane of suspended moral belief, the reader's perception of them altered more by their subtle actions toward others than toward the world at large.

Worm is a remarkable feat of plotting considering the author rarely planned his story. There's foreshadowing built from the beginning, and a surprising lack of deus ex machina for a Web serial. One of my few criticisms of the work (enough to lower it to four stars) is that many of the action scenes are drawn-out, extended, and intense to a degree, and don't interrupt for some of the touching, tender, gut-wrenching “quiet” scenes that Wildbow's so good at pulling. I read this book relatively slowly (over three and a half weeks), but still, I wonder if processing this as a serial would reverse my opinion on the sometimes dogged and drawn-out battle scenes. The end is a masterpiece, and delivers appropriate closure, for those who might be skeptical of fighting through something this long only to face a controversial ending.

And maybe Worm's flaws are what makes it so special. It's an uncut gem of a superhero novel, and it really shouldn't be any other way. The dialogue is sometimes awkward for its own sake, the characters overdramatized, the fighting brutal, the personalities larger-than-life, the plot gritty but of course unrealistic.

I'm two arcs into Ward, and it's already very different. The characters are better, more subtle; the writing is more refined and pointillistic. But there's a certain vigour you miss from Worm, a sense of discovery and wonder, a sense of optimism despite a clearly tragic inevitability about the whole work. It's really a unique debut, and possibly the best I've ever read.