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A review by annapeat
Tangle's Game by Stewart Hotston
1.0
In the acknowledgment of this book, the author says that “almost nothing in here is outside the realms of current technology” as if that is a good substitute for not explaining the technology that exists in the period of time that it is set in. After reading the whole book, I still have no idea what a blockchain is despite this word being the most repeated throughout. Also, the author never explicitly gives a time frame as to when it is set: he alludes to past events like Brexit but doesn’t say exactly how long ago they occurred. It’s the lack of detail which makes the world very difficult to believe. In comparison to 1984 by George Orwell which is so terrifyingly realistic, the world he describes is very flat and artificial.
Another issue is pace. There are moments which are unimportant that are dragged out. The points which are meant to be tense are rushed. The result is that I didn’t really feel any sense of anticipation.
The dialogue is also a major problem, it honestly made me cringe. It’s like the author watched a really cheesy spy movie and decided to copy and paste. The dialogue also sometimes swaps from really simple language to over complicated language, as if the author decided to take out a thesaurus and have a play.
I didn’t mind the main character although I found her very shallow and indecisive at times. My major problem was with the other characters. So someone who was threatening you LITERALLY 5 MINUTES AGO is now defending you from someone else and then you’re suddenly friends? If that happened one time I could understand it, but pretty much all of the character’s allies end up coming to her side in the same way.
The only thing I did like was the underlying message of privilege and power although it could have been explored in a much better way and didn’t really account for much in the long term.
Another issue is pace. There are moments which are unimportant that are dragged out. The points which are meant to be tense are rushed. The result is that I didn’t really feel any sense of anticipation.
The dialogue is also a major problem, it honestly made me cringe. It’s like the author watched a really cheesy spy movie and decided to copy and paste. The dialogue also sometimes swaps from really simple language to over complicated language, as if the author decided to take out a thesaurus and have a play.
I didn’t mind the main character although I found her very shallow and indecisive at times. My major problem was with the other characters. So someone who was threatening you LITERALLY 5 MINUTES AGO is now defending you from someone else and then you’re suddenly friends? If that happened one time I could understand it, but pretty much all of the character’s allies end up coming to her side in the same way.
The only thing I did like was the underlying message of privilege and power although it could have been explored in a much better way and didn’t really account for much in the long term.