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A review by jessicaesquire
Point B by Drew Magary
3.0
I am a huge advocate for Magary's previous novel, THE HIKE, so I was excited to see this one. THE HIKE had great ideas and a totally bananas structure and broke most of the rules of how novels work. It was better for it. POINT B also has good ideas, but operates in normal novel world with normal novel rules and doesn't manage to deliver the same satisfaction. It is at its best when it's most unexpected and unusual, but much of it is pretty standard.
The ideas here are the strength, though, and if you're coming for something come for those. Magary fully imagines a world where teleportation is possible... through one specific corporation's product. It is a critique of capitalism and science-fiction all at once, which is often true of our best science-fiction. Magary can see all the weird little ripples that go through the world when something like this exists, its effects on the workforce, real estate, tourism, etc etc. Each time you think you have a full view of the world, it gets expanded even more to be even weirder. I loved these parts of the book so much, they were so smart and revealed so perfectly, that the world is clear but also keeps opening up. And with each new reveal you think, "Oh right, that's absolutely what would happen." This is not a utopia or a dystopia, but it has what really good near-future stuff has: it feels an awful lot like the present, just with one big twist.
The plot and characters didn't work as well for me. Content warning, the book starts with and pivots around a suicide, and even as a person who doesn't have that as a particular issue in books, in this one I was not a fan of how it was handled. I also just wasn't a fan of the "I must avenge my sister's suicide" plot line generally. It was one of many elements that felt clunky (especially given that our protagonists are all teenagers yet never once behave like teenagers) and held back the book from being what I wanted it to be. Same goes for the Love at first sight plotline, though this is one I almost never like so could be more of a me problem. The characters never really felt real to me, more like stock figures. I liked them and wanted to spend more time with them but we never really did, everything always felt so rushed. And the bad guy was so bad it somehow didn't raise the stakes but lowered them.
I still read this really quickly, and I suspect readers who aren't as sensitive to plots based in tropes will enjoy it quite a lot, especially since the worldbuilding is so strong. If I hadn't read THE HIKE already I probably would have been a lot more generous to this book, but knowing how good he can be, I selfishly want more.
The ideas here are the strength, though, and if you're coming for something come for those. Magary fully imagines a world where teleportation is possible... through one specific corporation's product. It is a critique of capitalism and science-fiction all at once, which is often true of our best science-fiction. Magary can see all the weird little ripples that go through the world when something like this exists, its effects on the workforce, real estate, tourism, etc etc. Each time you think you have a full view of the world, it gets expanded even more to be even weirder. I loved these parts of the book so much, they were so smart and revealed so perfectly, that the world is clear but also keeps opening up. And with each new reveal you think, "Oh right, that's absolutely what would happen." This is not a utopia or a dystopia, but it has what really good near-future stuff has: it feels an awful lot like the present, just with one big twist.
The plot and characters didn't work as well for me. Content warning, the book starts with and pivots around a suicide, and even as a person who doesn't have that as a particular issue in books, in this one I was not a fan of how it was handled. I also just wasn't a fan of the "I must avenge my sister's suicide" plot line generally. It was one of many elements that felt clunky (especially given that our protagonists are all teenagers yet never once behave like teenagers) and held back the book from being what I wanted it to be. Same goes for the Love at first sight plotline, though this is one I almost never like so could be more of a me problem. The characters never really felt real to me, more like stock figures. I liked them and wanted to spend more time with them but we never really did, everything always felt so rushed. And the bad guy was so bad it somehow didn't raise the stakes but lowered them.
I still read this really quickly, and I suspect readers who aren't as sensitive to plots based in tropes will enjoy it quite a lot, especially since the worldbuilding is so strong. If I hadn't read THE HIKE already I probably would have been a lot more generous to this book, but knowing how good he can be, I selfishly want more.