A review by livslib
A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor by Hank Green

adventurous funny hopeful informative lighthearted mysterious reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.75

Well…lol. I have deeply mixed feelings about this book. There are a lot of pros and a lot of cons, but here’s the gist:

Pros:
  1. I think Hank Green offers a very timely (very consumable) examination of VR and AI—though overly descriptive and belabored at times, I do think many of the conversations presented in this book are conversations that we should be having at the dinner table.
  2. I found his attempt to examine and relay Maya’s experience as a black woman to be quite refreshing. Although he missed the mark a couple of times, the effort is what matters to me as a black reader. Less than 0.02% of the books that I’ve read by white authors have even given their black character’s an identity beyond a name, and Hank Green pushed the envelope with thoughtfulness, tact, and willful ignorance, and by doing so, he has earned my respect.

Cons:
  1. This book does so much, but at the same time, does absolutely nothing. If it weren’t for the premise, I would’ve DNF’ed about 40% through the book. I think we can all agree that Book 1 was better than this one by great measure, but even Book 1 was “so close but not quite”. 
  2. The switching back and forth between characters didn’t work because all of them sounded like Hank Green lol. No one (except MAYBE Carl) had a distinct voice.
  3. Where was the emotion? Where was the deep, existential fear for humanity? Maybe it’s just his matter-of-fact writing style, but I just didn’t feel moved even though the stakes were so high and felt so personal.

In short, I think Hank Green is a brilliant man (and dare I say, a craftier storyteller than his brother, John Green) but sometimes I just found it hard to enjoy his brilliant novel. Maybe novels just aren’t his thing (and that’s okay!) but I’m glad he gave this series to us anyways.