Unsong

Engaging from start to finish. My first experience into web fiction and it turns out to be a masterpiece.

I absolutely hated this story. The overarching plot is pretty good. All of the side characters are fantastic. The story structure could be improved upon with some editing. It was very clever and predictable in a good way. The puns and references were absolutely delightful.

But our main character was dumber than a box of rocks. If you don't think that the main character in a book matters or if you think that story structure isnt important to a story then you will love this book.

For everyone else, lets talk about Aaron.

We are told at the very beginning how intelligent Aaron is. He escapes Unsong by encoding a spell into a story on the fly. He has studied encryption. He broke kilpot. (the encryption system the Government uses to hide spells) Despite all of this he acts like a total idiot and I feel as though the author treats us like we are idiots. He gives a computer a soul so that it can find spells by using spells. NO ONE EVEN CONSIDERS THAT MAYBE THE COMPUTER THAT THEY GAVE A SOUL TO SO THAT IT COULD USE SPELLS...HAS A SOULAND CAN USE SPELLS.We the audience find this out as if its some sort of reveal half way through the book.Aaron gets captured by someone who he doesn't know he can trust. He steals a component to one of her spells because he is rotten and childish. He even says he doesn't know why he does it. (he does it because the plot needs him to) They drive to Vegas to get another component for the spell and on the drive Aaron learns he can trust his captor. He doesn't give the component back because he is worth less than a box of rocks. Aaron is bad at basic problem solving and communication. It seems like this whole conflict with his captor could have been avoided if he just communicated with her. I hate, just hate that story trope. It seems as though in Unsong everyone except Aaron has a brain and can use it to solve problems creatively. The first thing I thought when learning about the Vanishing Spell was if you are in a hairy situation you should put yourself in a parallel, solvable, but different situation then speak the vanishing name so you are more likely to get out alive. Speak all but one syllable of the Vanishing Spell, stick your head in a toilet and say the final syllable. You end up with your head in a toilet somewhere else. Gross but at least you are not dead. The book reveals this to be a solution that other characters use. This would seem to make the reader feel smart for figuring out the solution but all gave me was rage towards Aaron for not seeing such a simple use for the spell. Remember the guy who is an encryption master who encoded a spell into a story right in front of the head of Unsong? Yeah that guy who broke the encryption that the government uses? That guy didn't even consider that maybe GOD HIMSELF could encode a spell into a short paragraph on why evil exists. Aaron does nothing to advance the plot. He is just a passive actor that we see the plot through. I honestly think that if Aaron gets stuffed into a fridge during the Unsong raid the whole story would be much better. My rewrite would have Ana and Aaron wake Sarah and say something like, let's see much good Sarah can accomplish with these names. Unsong raids, Aaron dies and gets stuck in Ana's head but he can still use names (cause that would be cool). Sarah has an interlude of her waking up, getting her primary directive of maximizing goodness done. She learns what good is from the internet and then we have a sort of twisted foil to the comet king. All sorts of hijinks ensue as Sarah does "good" Ana is trying to find and refocus her and the story proceeds as normal but Sarah has a bit more of an active role and Aaron is actually more useful.I was dissatisfied with Metatons answer for why there is evil. Evil does not mean suffering. Metaton needs to explain the lack of miracles as suffering is only evil when Metaton allows it to happen. And when Metaton allows suffering it is Metaton doing evil. Minor flaw as I can't expect an author to solve an issue that has plagued philosophers for thousands of years. I feel like the structure of the plot was sacrificed for the incredible puns and the 72 chapter haMephorash fractal. I don't hold this against the author seeing how incredible that is as a feat and choose to take the book as a poem rather than a coherent novel.

I absolutely loved most of this book. The main character was just garbage. Let me prove it to you.

Aaron is a metaphor for Hephaestus.
He created an automaton of metal to work for him in Sarah. He discovered the gift that God gave to man in the spell that he discovers at the beginning of the book, and created Pandora.
one of Hephaestus's names is Amphigýeis which means “the lame one” referring to how Hephaestus is crippled
“lame” in English also means,
(of something intended to be entertaining) uninspiring and dull.
(of a person) naive or socially inept.

If this book was just bad or forgettable it would be just that. I would move on and ignore this book. But because it is a fantastic piece of literature that is delightful in almost every way I will never stop being angry at how the main character ruined this book for me. I only hate this book because I love it so much.