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A review by existentialhell
The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler
Did not finish book. Stopped at 10%.
Unimpressed by the writing, actively frustrated by how Nayler chooses to talk about/characterize Ha and Evrim. I don't trust him to deliver a naunced narrative — or even a compelling one — centered on consciousness when these early pages are already bloated with Philosophy 101 lecture questions presented as casually profound internal monologues. He presents Evrim as outside the gender binary by making Ha have an sociolinguistic crisis the first time they say Hello. It's excruciating. It's self-flagellating. It's three pages long. It completely derails the reader's experience.
"Ha was irritated by her brain's gender provincialism..." is so inane.
"If only she let go, pulled away from that desire to slot Evrim like a child's peg into a slot-shaped hole in a board—to resolve them into a gender."
"Ha began referring to Evrim, in her mind, with the Turkish "O"—round as its form, holistic, inclusive. The gender problem disappeared..."
Over–exposition festers in any paragraph that so much as breathes in the direction of existentialism. What does it mean to be conscious? To be human? These might be helpful questions to ask yourself as you, for example, draft a sci-fi thriller around hyperintelligent cephalopods. They are terrible questions for your brilliant scientist POV character to ask herself, utterly unprompted, barely 40 pages into the book. The story swells and rots.
If you pick it up, I hope the offgassing doesn't kill you.
"Ha was irritated by her brain's gender provincialism..." is so inane.
"If only she let go, pulled away from that desire to slot Evrim like a child's peg into a slot-shaped hole in a board—to resolve them into a gender."
"Ha began referring to Evrim, in her mind, with the Turkish "O"—round as its form, holistic, inclusive. The gender problem disappeared..."
Over–exposition festers in any paragraph that so much as breathes in the direction of existentialism. What does it mean to be conscious? To be human? These might be helpful questions to ask yourself as you, for example, draft a sci-fi thriller around hyperintelligent cephalopods. They are terrible questions for your brilliant scientist POV character to ask herself, utterly unprompted, barely 40 pages into the book. The story swells and rots.
If you pick it up, I hope the offgassing doesn't kill you.