I literally just finished it and I’m out of words. That ending was something else. I study physics and I’ve reflected quite a bit about the possible existence of extra dimensions and aliens, and about how we would be at their complete mercy, just like a 2D world would be at our complete mercy. But seeing it written like this, following each character, their lives, dreams and traumas and knowing that they are absolutely nothing to the “children”, nothing more than an ant, a toy, a Sim in a game… it made me feel vulnerable as fuck. The worst of it all is that the kid only freed them out of curiosity/pity, but not regret, that she didn’t really register them as real.
This kind of dread is already enough to make a book great, but the more technical aspects are really well done as well! Stephen King nails the character game, the city really feels so lived in and real. Everyone has their own voice, story and inner life, and the way it bounces between them didn’t feel rushed nor dragged on, which is quite a fine line to thread. Jim Rennie in particular was so well crafted. He is so absolutely hateable, and you know his game as soon as you meet him. He’s the “fuck you, got mine” rich fat coward archetype down to a tee and I grinned from ear to ear reading his death scene. My best description of him is a non-scifi version of Baron Harkonnen.
Barbara, Julia, Rusty, Rose, Brenda and the whole clan were big high points as well. You can’t help but root for them. It’s a huge book (955 pages in my edition) but I didn’t even feel it.
by Leticia_the_bookworm