Anthem

It's a Gen Z Mad Max Fury Road meets The Stand set exactly one second in the future. This is what you get when you ask ChatGPT to fictionalize the news as it's understood by Reddit. It's the mutant offspring of Don't Look Up savagely violated by Fight Club. I mean it could be scathing satirical fun if it wasn't hewn so close to how the world works now.

It does kick off with a promising start. A massive teenage suicide epidemic seems to have gone viral. Massive numbers of kids impassively off themselves leaving the enigmatic symbol A11 behind. One of the victims is 17 year old Claire Oliver, daughter of the CEO of Rise Pharmaceuticals that has made millions on the sale of oxycodone. Her brother is shuttled off to be heavily medicated and therapeutically placated at the ritzy Float Anxiety Abatement Center where he meets a monk-like 14 year old who has the temerity to be referred to as the Prophet.

He's roped Simon into his mission that will involve thinly veiled counterparts to Jeffrey Epstein, Amy Coney Barrett, Donald Trump, the Sacklers, QAnon, Proud Boys and Juggalos alongside characters that refer to themselves as Tyler Durdens, War Boys, Katniss, Cyclops, Legolas and Randall Flagg. And maybe therein lies the problem. The line between Hollywood dystopia and our real world farce is hopelessly porous. The book is unwilling to commit to being a cynically fun satire or novelistic thrill ride and in trying to do both instead ends up feeling ponderously nihilistic and a bit of a buzzkill. So it goes.