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A review by madskbae
A Better World by Marcus Sakey
1.0
This book is wet garbage. Not that Brilliance was great literature - but it was good, pulpy fun that I blazed through in 3 days. THIS one took me a month to slog through, and I only finished it out of grim determination. Not that it was worth it, what with the total cliffhanger ending: if Brilliance read like the screenplay to a mildly enjoyable sci-fi action film, this read like the pilot script to some shitty NBC adaptation of said film.
Almost no new, interesting characters or twists are introduced. Everything, down to the settings, are just retreads of the same people and places from the first book. And good lord, what's with the unnecessary recapping of Brilliance? Why are you reading this if you haven't read the previous book, and why not just put a recap up front if you have to bring everyone up to speed? I checked - at 65% in, Sakey was still recapping events from the first book whenever they went to a new place or met a new character.
So many nitpicks. Shannon is still the most annoying, clichéd "cool girl" character ever (Sakey in general writes women terribly - an angry woman is described as a "fierce mama bear". Why isn't her equally angry husband described as a "fierce papa bear"?). The protagonist is supposedly superhumanly good at reading people, yet he is SHOCKED when his ex-wife, drunk on red wine, the two of them sitting inside a tent in their living room on Thanksgiving, leans over and kisses him. A secondary protagonist is introduced, since we needed the perspective of ANOTHER grimly determined family man on the run in this book. I could go on forever.
In short: this book is absolutely horrible.
Almost no new, interesting characters or twists are introduced. Everything, down to the settings, are just retreads of the same people and places from the first book. And good lord, what's with the unnecessary recapping of Brilliance? Why are you reading this if you haven't read the previous book, and why not just put a recap up front if you have to bring everyone up to speed? I checked - at 65% in, Sakey was still recapping events from the first book whenever they went to a new place or met a new character.
So many nitpicks. Shannon is still the most annoying, clichéd "cool girl" character ever (Sakey in general writes women terribly - an angry woman is described as a "fierce mama bear". Why isn't her equally angry husband described as a "fierce papa bear"?). The protagonist is supposedly superhumanly good at reading people, yet he is SHOCKED when his ex-wife, drunk on red wine, the two of them sitting inside a tent in their living room on Thanksgiving, leans over and kisses him. A secondary protagonist is introduced, since we needed the perspective of ANOTHER grimly determined family man on the run in this book. I could go on forever.
In short: this book is absolutely horrible.