A review by one4ale
The Oracle Year by Charles Soule

4.0

Phenomenal. I already knew him from 8 Billion Genies, but this exceeded all expectations. I could hardly put this book down without immediately wanting to see what's next, and not for a moment throughout the first half did I have a moment of peace without anxiety for Will and Hamza.
A lot of times I don't know how to feel about a story because I know it ends well. More or less, everything ends as you think and the meat of the story, the journey, is the only thing that makes it worth it. Endings are hard to land for me and it was my biggest fear reading this; Soule landed it, I think.

I think a lot of the critiques made by others are valid. I think a lot of the critiques made by others made me wonder if we read the same book. Here's mine:

Critiques

Spoiler

- The women related to Will could've had more to do. Miko's role is mostly to be the voice of reason to him and Hamza, and support Will, and Leigh's role is mostly to be the Witness to Events as a Lois Lane trope and again to support Will. Neither of those things are bad on its own, and they're fun to read and get to know in their own right. I just think it could've leaned more on other aspects of them, especially towards the end. The Florida Ladies and the Coach were great, though, I loved them.
- Kind of a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse ending? Everything wraps up nice and neatly into basically paradise, but that's kind of the point of the predictions so it's whatever.
- The final bad guy is a Central Asian terrorist with a nuke.

tl;dr: Good book, has issues, would read again after forgetting the plot in time. Find a library and read it.