Acts 1, 2: 8.75

so much sucking and fucking and you will not like it. Premise is a cabal of Epstein heads who can take control of other peoples' bodies. You can connect the dots. Unfortunately excellent narration (literary, audible notwithstanding) and an ultra dark premise. Very good so far. Holocaust horrors + JK Rowling is a plagiarist.

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Act 3: 8

The middle third of this book reads like one prolonged shootout/car chase broken up only by some revelations/slower detective work, but it's like 80% action. An engaging read, but I think it lacks a "prestige" or reveal that seems important for a pseudo mystery format that it's mostly following at this point. I don't know if there will be one since I think it's main selling point is the horror (in the reaction sense, rather than the genre sense. It's not existentially scary as much as horrific that these things keep happening for hundreds of pages lol).

All reassurances of progress being made on the detective front is yanked from the reader.

Some cool narrative decisions like depicting death scenes/climactic scenes from multiple points of view.

Act 4: 8.50

Brief calm, more development of the villains and then more action. A lot of the action scenes are almost too-fast-paced. Like, characters are described as moving around scenery that we as the reader didn't know existed until it was providing life-saving cover, or blocking crucial LoS. It would be more annoying if the novel was like a Tom Clancy/tactical shooter, but it's easy to overlook since in this case it's a jewish medic fighting against mephistopholean legion.

Some violence is satisfying via grimdark character arcs. The gore is definitely gory, but not gratuitous. Just dry descriptions of gruesome things happening – by and large it's not a physically terrifying book, but rather psychological.

Sucking and fucking: fanfic between Himmler and Billy Joel Osteen that no one wanted.

Last scene of act 4 between Natalie and Melanie is so badass, elevating this to an 8.5, but lack of progression/development of an overarching plot ~650 pages in drags the score back down and will be more severely penalized in the final act if there's not either a grand reveal, shebang, or invigorating fight sequence. Nevertheless, definitely worth sticking out at this point

Act V: 8

Possible plothole whereby Natalie has convinced Melanie that she's a catpaw of Nina in order to sneak a surrogate onto the island (Ms. Seul or whatever?) – Melanie sees Willie through this surrogates eyes (while her body is in the same room as Natalie) as he's talking to Saul, but Melanie doesn't recognize Saul??? Even though Saul is the source of all the info that Natalie has on Melanie... Maybe she's just old and dumb, but that hasn't been the case thus far...

Okay jesus fucking christ it got dark again.

Final: 9

I'm reminded of the excitement of the (good) scope creep of the 3BP series. First the Earth, then the solar system, then the whole dimension... The climax of Carrion Comfort tickled the same fancy, albeit on a much smaller scale.

Elements of The Most Dangerous Game, more chess, more mind rape, some surprisingly tasteful (?) or well done holocaust biographies intermixed in a very cool way. Not a happy ending, not a sad ending. Not a scary ending either, just a very complete book.

I enjoyed that Saul Laski's character perfectly aligns with everything else I've read about the Jewish mindset of those who lived through the holocaust and became involved in the establishment of Israel. The rightfully paranoid diligence and grit. His character is dope.

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