The Outside
Ratings26
Average rating3.9
Solid 4 stars. See my full thoughts here: https://youtu.be/Dzy73nr9gr8
I really enjoyed the concepts and the mind-bending of this book and especially loved the ‘Gods' and how they came to be.
There are many themes woven into this novel ??? themes about faith, for instance, and what it means to become divine ??? but the one that stands out the most for me is...the difficulty of doing what is right, not least because figuring right from wrong is always harder than it seems. A person may desire to do ???the right thing,??? but that desire can be easily twisted and manipulated, until what one does might seem ???right???, but turns out to be in the service of something terrible. This is what happens to Yasira: she is twisted and manipulated to do things that she later comes to realize are terrible. But she learns from those mistakes, and, as I have said earlier, chooses to reject two evils instead of choosing the lesser one, even if doing ???the right thing??? comes at great personal cost.
Full review here: https://kammartinez.wordpress.com/2021/09/20/review-the-outside-ada-hoffmann/
I really enjoyed this book. The characters live in a world of AI gods and their agents, cybernetically enhanced human “angels”. The main character is a physicist who is thrown into a world of plots, counterplots and Lovecraftian horrors after an energy source she creates destroys a space station. Rather than being immediately executed as a heretic, she is pressed into service to locate her mentor, the source of the equations that led to the disaster.
I wouldn't call most of the characters “likable” per se, but they were interesting and dynamic. (Though unfortunately I found the love interest kind of bland) The horrors that Yasira comes into contact with are described in an engaging way and it's interesting to see her thought process changing over time.
A very unusual but quite enjoyable story, with well-crafted characters (on all sides), mind-enthralling situations, and an ending that satisfied completely. With a small portal left open for more tales in the universe presented herein!