I just finished this and here are my thoughts on it, I'd like you hear your thoughts on my thoughts:
– The writing is good. Good pace, not overly descriptive but enough to get a picture in your mind, not simple and dumbed down but not pretentious or "look how much I can use a thesaurus." It wasn't, for me, a quick read, but it wasn't a slog. I actually savored the words, the story, the images.
– I liked the setting, the train itself is a character. I liked the story. It's not the most original story, but it's well told. I liked the characters, even though they weren't the most fleshed out, they had enough backstory for me to understand them.
– It seemed to genre jump, if that's even a thing. It's straight up fantasy, sort of slight horror-ish, in my mind, as I read it, it felt sort of steam punk but not, a bit Lovecraftian, and even had a touch of philosophy.
– The touch of philosophy I'm talking about is The Observer Effect, from the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, the concept of "you can't observe something without changing it." Also the "everything is unified, we are all one" philosophies. I don't know if that was intentional or that's just me reading into it too much.
– I really enjoyed the book, it seems to have stuck with me, I can't stop thinking about it. It's not the greatest book I've ever read, but it seems to have impacted me enough to where I felt compelled to go on Reddit and type my thoughts out even though I know better.
Not sure I would whole heartedly recommend it, but I would mention it to anyone looking for an interesting story.
Have you read this and if so, what did you think?
by machobiscuit
1 Comment
I read this not too long ago and I kind of enjoyed it up until the ending. I really did not enjoy the ending – it just felt contrived and absolutely ridiculous. Like the author wrote themselves into a corner and just said fuck it, the train goes forever. Like how does that even work? It puts down it’s own tracks but then what – do they stay there forever? Is it like driving down roads or flattening buildings when they’re in the way? How are the people on the train eating etc?
Agree about the characters not being fleshed out. They were all very flat & just meh.
I didn’t read the same philosophy into it but I like what you’re saying about the observer effect. It’s an interesting way to think about it. At the same time though it does feel like the train was doing more than just observing – it was going into the Wastelands, throwing off steam or smoke or whatever from the engines, plus the tracks, etc. Plus the Wastelands are alive themselves and watching the train back, so I thought it was more those things driving the changes? Idk. For a truly observer effect situation I would think that would have had to be like people watching the wastelands from the walls without entering them & just that creating changes.
I guess overall for me the book felt like something that could have been good but just the execution was not there. I think it’s so interesting how different people read different things from the same book though – like I would never have thought about the philosophy aspect without your post!