I ripped through it yesterday in a few hours’ time. It was so… flimsy? Like more of a too-long short story or merely an outline of an idea? It was as if Mandel just had to get something, anything to the publisher to fulfill a contract real quick. The author character made me never ever want to write a book. The characters had no depth, the concepts weren’t fleshed out, and the vision of the future wasn’t credible to me. What did everyone else think?
Went from liking the idea to bored real quick.
The “pandemic” character was a just an author self insert from 2020, with incredibly little effort beyond that. In fact Id’ve appreciated just going full Steven King and inserting herself into the narrative in 2020, rather than the quarter hearted attempt at making a “near future” setting by slapping a “hologram” label on a handful of things.
I suppose if you’re just into writing style and characters then the book is over so fast you might not notice that the characters are shallow, and might not care that the plot and ideas are empty.