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aaaaaand the illusion Blake Crouch had cast on me is completely shattered.

2/5 instead of a 1 because despite everything, I really like the way Blake Crouch writes. His books are so tightly edited and efficient that I just kind of look at one of his books out of the corner of my eye and suddenly I'm 150 pages in. I don't know how he does it and as much flak as he gets for it, it takes real talent to put so little obstacle between the information on the page and the brain of the reader. His style reminds me of like.. a super simple dish done to perfection, or maybe even a Barnett Newman painting. The kind of painting where at first you're like ‘ok, just a big red canvas' then you walk closer and realize how absolutely flawlessly it's done. It takes a lot more confidence and dexterity to perform this efficiently than he really gets credit for.

Everything else about this book suuuuuuuucks. Holy shit.

I am so disappointed. I thought maybe, just MAYBE, in the Crouch novel where the protagonist is a failed scientist who accidentally gets upgraded into a hyper-intelligent post-human genius we'd get a plot that isn't just resolved by meathead jingoistic pewpew gunfight bullshit. But I guess not.

It blows my mind how hard the ball got fumbled on this. Like what even does Crouch think intelligence is? Because the answer he comes to in this book is being smarter = being better at shoot gun good.

You would think, that in a novel pitting the two smartest humans who ever lived against each other in a high concept battle of wits to decide the philosophical path the human species will take in their race against a self-imposed extinction due to climate change / inequality, that maybe there would be some cat-and-mouse style twists and turns? Plans and subterfuge and subversion and tricks and backstabbing and I dunno, drama? Maybe a philosophical debate or two where we can see their opposing viewpoints? Nah, of course not. It's a Blake Crouch book. So fuck all the pretense, here's some pewpew gunfight bullshit.