I recently read the first book in this series, and enjoyed it enough to want to try the next one. The first book left you on a cliffhanger, so I was eager to see how it resolved. Unfortunately I couldn’t get into this book, and for the first time in a long time I gave up on a book and didn’t finish.
I hate to write about something that I didn’t finish – it doesn’t seem fair to critique it not having experienced it in its entirety – but I think I should write about why I didn’t like it here for my future self, just in case I forget why I gave up on the book.
The short version of why I gave up – there is a lot of content in the beginning about the side characters dealing with the loss of another character from the first book. Dealing with the loss and also their own social issues takes up so much of the story that I felt like this was more of a self-help book rather than a science fiction story. The group of people from multiple races each have their own issues with identity (race/gender/sexual/etc), confidence, finance, parents, and so on. They consume huge amounts of social media and deal with fame and when are we going to get to the good stuff?
I guess what I missed was the joy – the joy of unwinding the mystery, and the sense of discovery when they unveil some clue. I wasn’t getting that from this book after dedicating a couple hours of reading – so I decided to move on to something else.]
That something else is The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie.
