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A review by everybody
A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor by Hank Green
3.0
This book was far blunter in stating political opinion than its predecessor. It was very obvious when the plot just functions as a backdrop to talk about political ideas.
While I think most of the first book's arguments were very hard to dispute as they, for the most part, just pointed out observable social dynamics in an engaging way, this book sticks its neck out way further in its political discussion and makes a few controversial assumptions.
Beyond its extended social discussion, this book felt very much like a repetition of the first book but with classically raised stakes. This is something I loved about the first book. While there were a lot of ominous global events going on, the plot itself didn't have concrete stakes beyond individual people's well-being. This book felt a lot more formulaic in comparison.
Andy's struggle very much felt like a repetition of the pitfalls of having power and influence but in a far less nuanced way than April had in the first book.
The entire book was very blunt about its messages and left little to be discovered by the reader.
It also had far less moral ambiguity. The entire plot became a rather black and white affair very quickly.
While a lot of the tools the author used in his first book were quite novel and worked very well, a lot of them were overused in this book. Too much of a good thing and all that. One that was particularly noticeable was the unreliable narrator. Despite it not being used for an actual twist this time, the constant back and forth got old fast. "Now I am going to tell you everything, just kidding, I left this out but now I am going to be entirely honest, got you, I'll amend this other thing now, entirely out of order, etc."
While I think most of the first book's arguments were very hard to dispute as they, for the most part, just pointed out observable social dynamics in an engaging way, this book sticks its neck out way further in its political discussion and makes a few controversial assumptions.
Beyond its extended social discussion, this book felt very much like a repetition of the first book but with classically raised stakes. This is something I loved about the first book. While there were a lot of ominous global events going on, the plot itself didn't have concrete stakes beyond individual people's well-being. This book felt a lot more formulaic in comparison.
Andy's struggle very much felt like a repetition of the pitfalls of having power and influence but in a far less nuanced way than April had in the first book.
The entire book was very blunt about its messages and left little to be discovered by the reader.
It also had far less moral ambiguity. The entire plot became a rather black and white affair very quickly.
While a lot of the tools the author used in his first book were quite novel and worked very well, a lot of them were overused in this book. Too much of a good thing and all that. One that was particularly noticeable was the unreliable narrator. Despite it not being used for an actual twist this time, the constant back and forth got old fast. "Now I am going to tell you everything, just kidding, I left this out but now I am going to be entirely honest, got you, I'll amend this other thing now, entirely out of order, etc."