this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2024
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[–] ChairmanMeow@programming.dev 1 points 3 months ago

The Darkroom of Damocles.

The big "twist" in the book basically gets pretty obviously announced in the first chapter "oh this person is exactly like me but better in every way I can conceive, how vexing. Gosh would I like to be him". It's almost spelled out.

Once the twist is known, the rest of the book makes little sense. Sure, the main character becomes an unreliable narrator, but he's not just twisting details; hugely important events can no longer happen if you assume the twist, because there's no physical way of it happening, unless the narrator is so extremely unreliable that you might as well be reading Jurassic Park only to reveal it was actually Terminator or something.

And then the book tries to end all clever by dangling the whole "was this the twist? Was it all real? Who knoooowws" making the book feel like a massive waste of time. Clearly the author wanted you to doubt the narrator at the end so you'd go back and think "oh was this/that a hint?", but with the twist being so painfully obvious it lands flat on its face.

I was hoping there'd be some clever ending that meta-played on the whole "the reader has been distrusting of the narrator"-ordeal, but there was nothing. Very unfulfilling reading experience.