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Eversion 2 - The Plot Twist
Obviously the Big Plot Twist is the real identity of Silas (and Ada) in contrast both to the other crew members, and his own self-perception. There were plenty of clues about the real location of the ship, but not nearly so many about identity. Did this work for you? Had you anticipated it?
Comments
As I said, I recognised the computer game trope, and so knew that Silas was "beyond" the narrative. God-like in the Abrahamic sense. I think there's something here about navel-gazing and solipsism, and the dead-end of independent sovereignty, but I'm not sure what it is.
I haven't read anything else by Reynolds, but here I think his theme was a little beyond his grasp.
I thought it did an ok job of winding its way between giving away too much of the twist so that it became too easy to guess, and still dripfeeding me enough to keep me interested. The first one can be boring and the second one can be extremely frustrating (like how I am feeling with Season 2 of Severance at this point). He does a good job of making me think I can figure it out but really, I can't quite get there. I could see how this might not work for someone who figured it out well ahead of time though.
I figured out where the ship was, and who Silas was by the second iteration - the Patagonia one. It didn't harm the narrative for me. I was pulling for ol' Silas.
I actually didn't really find any of the characters engaging. Their naming was a big one for me - the names seemed to thrown together, like pulled out of a phone book. Murgatroyd? Heavens! Also the prose itself was really not engaging. I kept comparing it mentally to The Terror by Dan Simmons, which was much more immersive and descriptive in it's language, and really much more enjoyable to me. They both start off quite similarly in a ship, and both written by SF guys. Also, the repetitions represented these obvious glitches, where I was like 'ok, what just happened? Were starting over? Same character names, but slightly different. Throw out what happened before? So I knew something was off. But I never found I care much and when the reveal came it frankly felt a bit silly. Coade = Code? Bleh. No wonder the names seemed so contrived.