I’m not mad just disappointed.
Just kidding, I’m pretty mad.
I’m going to say what many reviewers have said before me: This is not a book about a man who is swallowed by a whale and has to use science to get out alive. This is a book about a man (a teenager, actually, but more on that below) who has daddy issues real bad, and he happens to be swallowed by a whale also. The parts with the whale are few and far between—it doesn’t even show up until nearly halfway through the book—and even when the dude is inside the whale, the focus is the dude ruminating on his fraught relationship with his now deceased father. The whale stuff is not about whale stuff or thrills or science, it is a big old giant (not great) metaphor for this dude’s dad not loving him and how he can’t get over it and just BLAH. I don’t care.
I didn’t want angst and whining about how daddy was mean but I loved him anyway; I wanted to watch a dude get swallowed by a whale and then science his way out. If that is what you want, too, then do not read this book. Just go read The Martian again, or some other actual sci-fi thriller/horror.
Also he’s not even a man! He’s eighteen! (or nineteen?) So we get whiny young-adult thoughts instead of grown-ass man thoughts, and that is an extra heap of something I did NOT want when I started this book. (The audiobook narrator fed into this angsty, whiny tone on top of all of THAT.)
I’m sure there’s an audience for this, but that audience is mostly not reading it because they think it’s a horror book about a dude being swallowed by a whale.
Dang, I’ve talked myself down to a one star.
Chipping Away at Mt. TBR, Spooky Season Edition — Book 3/31
