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A review by lochnessvhs
Those That Wake by Jesse Karp
1.0
One time I went on a ghost hunt/walking tour. It was so stupidly bad that my partner and I enjoyed ourselves because we kept poking each other with our elbows and laughing at the absurdity.
This book was kind of similar, except I never once enjoyed it while I was reading. And sometimes the laughing that came out of me sounded like I was dying.
There was one point, near the beginning of Those That Wake, when a character named Laura tries to contact her parents and they act like they don't know her. They tell her they don't have a daughter and how did they get her number and please stop harassing them. That one chapter was super interesting and gave me hope this would be a decent, if at least average, sort of book.
Not much later the book explains that, yes, civilization is crumbling because EVIL CORPORATIONS have INFECTED SOCIETY WITH......MEMES!
“With the improvement of imaging technology and Internet capability in standard cells, people are exposed to this virulence every moment of every day. They now crave the stimulation, to the point that its absence feels undesirable. They are, in effect, addicted to meme transmission, and they don’t even know it.“ -pg. 236
Our intrepid heroes discover this because one of them was an employee for a shady company headed by someone who has hid his identity and location forever. Except after buying one map they find his house immediately where this man in-turn explains to them the entire plot of the book in one soul-melting chapter of boredom and eye rolls.
After anonymous men storm the house trying to kill them, they get out by using an ancient key to start a car. They then head straight to the hidden skyscraper and meet him: THE MEME HIMSELF.
“We are the evolved and evolving species homo sapiens,” Remak countered, “unique and unprecedented. You are only a genus of a species, just another form of meme.” -pg. 282
I’m pretty sure they work together to DEFEAT THE EVIL MEME, but I couldn’t for the life of me tell you how that is done, only that one of them doesn’t make it and then people start waking up as the meme starts dislodging itself from their minds.
Just a few days ago I wrote about how I think all books that are published are worth reading because they are the product of someone’s passion and hard work. Those That Wake is seriously messing with my theory. I honestly cannot imagine how this book was published (by Graphia, a subsidiary of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). I feel like a lot of people have a lot of explaining to do. How on earth was this story pitched? Memes are destroying the world and the only ones that can stop them are a privileged white girl, a creepy teenage boxer, a disgruntled high school teacher, and an IRS agent!
This book was kind of similar, except I never once enjoyed it while I was reading. And sometimes the laughing that came out of me sounded like I was dying.
There was one point, near the beginning of Those That Wake, when a character named Laura tries to contact her parents and they act like they don't know her. They tell her they don't have a daughter and how did they get her number and please stop harassing them. That one chapter was super interesting and gave me hope this would be a decent, if at least average, sort of book.
Not much later the book explains that, yes, civilization is crumbling because EVIL CORPORATIONS have INFECTED SOCIETY WITH......MEMES!
“With the improvement of imaging technology and Internet capability in standard cells, people are exposed to this virulence every moment of every day. They now crave the stimulation, to the point that its absence feels undesirable. They are, in effect, addicted to meme transmission, and they don’t even know it.“ -pg. 236
Our intrepid heroes discover this because one of them was an employee for a shady company headed by someone who has hid his identity and location forever. Except after buying one map they find his house immediately where this man in-turn explains to them the entire plot of the book in one soul-melting chapter of boredom and eye rolls.
After anonymous men storm the house trying to kill them, they get out by using an ancient key to start a car. They then head straight to the hidden skyscraper and meet him: THE MEME HIMSELF.
“We are the evolved and evolving species homo sapiens,” Remak countered, “unique and unprecedented. You are only a genus of a species, just another form of meme.” -pg. 282
I’m pretty sure they work together to DEFEAT THE EVIL MEME, but I couldn’t for the life of me tell you how that is done, only that one of them doesn’t make it and then people start waking up as the meme starts dislodging itself from their minds.
Just a few days ago I wrote about how I think all books that are published are worth reading because they are the product of someone’s passion and hard work. Those That Wake is seriously messing with my theory. I honestly cannot imagine how this book was published (by Graphia, a subsidiary of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). I feel like a lot of people have a lot of explaining to do. How on earth was this story pitched? Memes are destroying the world and the only ones that can stop them are a privileged white girl, a creepy teenage boxer, a disgruntled high school teacher, and an IRS agent!