A review by cdale8
Deus Ex Machina by Andrew Foster Altschul

2.0

I really liked the idea of this book, but had a really hard time finishing it. I grew tired of the hammering negativity on current pop-sell-out culture (the nadir of which it seems, according to the author, is the survivor-like reality TV genre), the frenetic switching between secondary characters that were half-drawn (or was that on purpose, to try to straddle the mystery and cynical pop-culture-bashing genres?), and a generally convoluted writing style. Under all these things, there's a great almost-message about introspection and love, but the problem is that this message is buried so deep underneath the sparsely-drawn characters and the snide comments about network executives that it is not drawn out or presented in any sort of meaningful way. The happenings during the arrival at "Paradise" was the point where clarity was needed, but ended up being more confusingly written than the rest of the "Deserted" scenes. The backstory on the Producer and some of the other crew was too-little, too-late to help really clarify the motivations of the characters' actions throughout the book.