Rabbits

Just as addictive as the podcast! What a ride!

DNF for me. I felt like it was a bit all over the place and I didn't particularly care about anything that was happening.

Rabbits is a book that you have to finish for the beginning to truely make sense or feel like it even mattered. The first, 15 or so chapters felt slow, meandering around and a whole lot of words being said for nothing to really happened.

But once things picked up the book became really enjoyable as K begins to experience more and more reality altering events. If there will he a second book I will probably pick it up but I'm glad I stuck with the book in the long run.

More like a 3.5?

I've listened to all of Terry Miles' podcasts and I don't know how but he always ropes me in and I always feel the exact same sense of dissatisfaction by the end. “This time it'll be different!” I think, going back to another one of his works. It never is though.

There are a lot of things about this book (and his entire oeuvre in general) that I feel like I could drag and be super nitpicky about, but also a lot of that doesn't really matter in the moment, because his works are just straight up fun.

I really think Terry Miles should be working in TV or film. He's a bit too action oriented for podcasts, and a bit too script oriented for books. I really think he'd find his stride and a huge new audience if some mid-tier studio took a chance and let him create a pilot.

In my head K is NB queer. That's all.

Probably a 4.
If you are a computer nerd, a gamer, or a conspiracy theorist, then you will most likely love this book.

The story line is convoluted and intricate following the main character K, playing (or maybe not playing) what may or may not be a world spanning game.

Read the publishers blurb, because we are not allowed to talk about the game.

Good, but annoying

This was a fun and interesting story but 1) I think my excitement for only-I-can-save-the-day gamer stories started and ended with Ready Player One and 2) too. many. details. Stop with all the adjectives and brand names of the cassette tape players everyone has and name dropping. It's just distracting and annoying. Ready Player One suffered from this too but at least when I read that it was a little more novel.

Rabbits by Terry Miles is a mind-bending head trip that is part Ready Player One and part The Matrix. It is a book that creeps and burrows into your mind, and you can spend weeks or months analyzing what you read. Rabbits is the kind of book you can read multiple times and still not wholly figure out.

“We each had our reasons for wanting the fantastical world promised by Rabbits to replace the flawed emotional narrative of our real lives.”

Rabbits is based in the world of long-form pseudo-documentary by Terry Miles. Rabbits the novel is about a narrator known as K searching for information about the addictive underground game Rabbits.

Rabbits, the game is very hush-hush. Players who play it do not speak of it and operate on the clandestine fringes of retro-tech and obscure culture. All research done on the game takes place in a shadow world of people in the know. Finding information and clues about Rabbits becomes as much a part of the game as the obvious goal of winning. K's research leads her down winding paths and rabbit holes, searching for information that will help K win the game. Once the game is won, a new iteration will start.

Eventually, K becomes wholly addicted to the game. With the help of K's friend, Chloe, they become entangled in the game world. Also, to complicate things, a reclusive billionaire gets involved who mysteriously ends up disappearing and eventually winning the game has possible world-ending repercussions.

Terry Miles's writing feels very much like listening to a mystery podcast. I haven't heard the original Rabbits podcast. However, it has a dedicated cult-like following. The problem that I ran into with Rabbits is positive and negative. Rabbits is a very intricate and entangled story. The characters question their reality, and the story's narrator is unreliable. It can be challenging to follow along, and I found myself going back and rereading sections of the book, trying to keep track of some of the plot details.

I liked Rabbits quite a bit because of the highly complex nature of the story. I find this kind of story very engaging, and I am a fan of unreliable narrators. But I can understand how a story like Rabbits would be complicated for some readers to enjoy. No part of K's journey is straightforward. Matter-a-fact, there are false starts and details that you think will be important but turn out not to be. Because of this, I can see a story like Rabbits obtaining a cult-like following with the strength of his writing and world-building. Especially if Miles continues to write in this world and interconnects Rabbits to other books. However, I don't see everyone enjoying Rabbits.

Reads like a mashup of The OA, Fringe, and Dispatches From Elsewhere.

Woah.

First, I would like to thank NetGalley and the publisher for access to this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Woah. I went into this book completely blind. I have not listened to the podcast or consumed any other media related to this story. I'm kind of glad I didn't. The best way I could tell someone about this story is that it's like if “Ready Player One” was set in real life, and scarier, and slightly magical.

This book follows K, whose life obsession has been playing a game called Rabbits, where the goal and instructions for the game are covered in mystery, and you're not supposed to talk about it. He follows patterns and connections in everyday life, trying to find out information about the game. When he is confronted by an unexpected visitor about the game, his entire life is flipped on its head. Between missing chunks of memory and weird things existing where they won't before, K has to confront the concept of reality and what is and isn't real in his world.

This book was honestly terrifying. I don't know if it would be classified as fantasy, sci-fi, thriller, or horror. I guess all of the above! I really enjoyed this story and the characters. I found myself slack jawed multiple times, and confused more than once. My heart rate accelerated as the characters encountered more and more obstacles in the game, and experienced increasing amounts of life threatening events. The plot was captivating, the characters funny and relatable, and the pacing incredible.

This book is incredibly well thought out and crafted. I recommend this to anyone looking for a thrilling, thought provoking book.

TW: alcohol, anxiety, assault, Attempted murder, blood, bones, death, drugs, gore, gun, gun violence, hallucinations, murder, violence

3.5 stars. This book was an enjoyable nerdy romp. The story was very creative though I did find the ending to be a bit convoluted.

Thanks to NetGalley for a digital review copy.