A review by idgetfay
Genesis by Brendan Reichs

4.0

This book helped me realize something about myself... I care a lot about plot. If you had asked me last week what I find most important in a book, I would have said the characters. But as I give this 4 stars it probably doesn’t deserve I’m realizing characters don’t mean as much as I thought. Good characters can cover for plot holes and crappy writing really well, but turns out an intriguing premise and some decent action can cover for bad characters. Every last character in this book was little more than a plot device, down to the main two. Tack, the character I could stand the least, came the closest to feeling real for me. Sarah come in second. I do not care about Min. I do not care about Noah. Their voices are virtually indistinguishable, making the switching perspectives occasionally confusing and obnoxious. I certainly don’t care about their supremely unrealistic romantic reconciliation and reclamation of their humanity. I do not care about the jumble of extra characters just there to support a premise. But heck if I don’t want to know what freakin happens next. These 64 characters could be anybody/nobody and I just want to watch them exist in this crazy world. It’s more like a spectator sport than a story at this point. “64 digital students enter. How many can leave?” I want to see how this plays out. Reichs has created a world, a situation, that feels unique to me, even though a lot of this has been done before. That doesn’t mean the plot is perfect... things happened that I saw coming or were a little too contrived or convenient. He did do a pretty decent job of addressing the things that didn’t make sense in the first book, filling in some holes. Most of what happened in this book was negated by the ending, but it was a roller coaster and leaves a literal whole new world to explore in the next one, so hey... I’m still on board.