There’s nothing quite as annoying as reading a book that you want so badly to love, only to be forced, witnessing fumble after fumble, to reconcile yourself to your dislike of it. That was my experience with Negative Space, a story of teenage suicide and drug experimentation set in a small city in New England. Unfortunately, it commits several cardinal sins that are more horrifying that almost anything the story itself has to offer. I list these in no particular order:
Hey, remember that brief plot description I wrote above? Sounds pretty interesting, right? Bad news: it’s all fucking witchcraft! The idea of a truly inexplicable suicide epidemic (we’re talking dozens of people per year in a single town) is much scarier than black magic could ever be. But, hey, is the witchcraft itself interesting? No! This aspect is simultaneously over and underexplored. Seemingly every character except the limpdick narrators has an intimate knowledge of it, but it somehow, SOMEHOW remains basically a background element. There is, therefore, grounding in neither reality nor in unreality; the former isn't believable, and the latter is little more than set dressing.
The narrators are so damn boring I almost put the book down at several points just so I wouldn’t have to spend more time with them. There are more interesting characters in the wings, too: Tyler is pretty fascinating throughout, and when the best character abruptly shows up 2/3 of the way through, I thought to myself that I wish they’d been the POV characters. Instead, we’re stuck with a trio of passive idiots who I can only imagine standing around slack-jawed while witnessing terrible things befall the people of their town. How these morons never manage to put two and two together, I'll never know. Wait, I do know: it's lazy writing.
i loved this book but this was a hilarious review. i do think yeager bites off a bit more than he can chew and that the story feels a little lost, at points. i prefer amygdalatropolis for this reason. feels much more grounded and focused, and the things it has to say about online radicalization and the degeneracy enabled by anonymity are very interesting.