Wild Massive

By Scotto Moore

Page I bailed on: 62

Verdict: I actually started out getting into this. I liked the idea of Carissa zipping between the infinite floors of the Building in her elevator, and when a stranger came knocking he (or ze, as ze is a shapeshifter with no gender) was nicely introduced.

But then the next few chapters had me feeling like I was drowning in pages and pages of backstory and exposition that I gave up any hope of keeping straight. This overload was something I didn’t like in Moore’s previous book, Battle of the Linguist Mages, and I felt like there was going to be even more of it here. Add in other annoyances like the messy mix of science, theoretical physics, and magic and the heavy use of trendy gender pronouns that nobody is likely to recognize ten years from now and it wasn’t long before I just couldn’t take any more. I don’t like magic in my SF, and I don’t want to sound anti-trans or anti-woke but it’s hard reading sentence like this:

Ze had been nude when ze first dropped into the elevator, but now ze seemed to be constructing clothing for zirself, style yet to be determined, zir skin rippling this way and that.

The DNF files