So, in 2018 Hank Green (of the Vlogbrothers and...lots of other stuff) published his first novel: An Absolutely Remarkable Thing. This novel, with a plot about first contact with aliens and a deeper meaning about social media and fame in the modern era, is honestly a masterpiece. It's so good. I felt changed after reading it, and I still feel the same echo of that feeling on every subsequent reread. Plus the audiobook is phenomenal, Kristen Sieh has a terrific voice and exquisite delivery. If you haven't read it, I unconditionally recommend it.
Then, in 2020, the sequel and end of the story was published, A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor. It is definitely a continuation, escalation, and full arc for the story and characters. It is really very good. But it was not...well, absolutely remarkable. And I wanted to try to get into words WHY the sequel did not connect with me in the same way the original did. So this is that.
SPOILERS FOR BOTH NOVELS BELOW
There is a single, overarching thought that I've had about these two books:
An Absolutely Remarkable Thing is a comparatively small story that feels vast and timeless. A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor is a huge story that feels very small. Let me sort of break down what I mean by that. I'm gonna abbreviate the books moving forward to ART and BFE because I don't feel like typing the whole book titles every time.
ART is told almost entirely from the point of view of April May, and the main cast of the book consists of: April, Maya, Miranda, Robin, and Andy (not in that order of importance). The book is mostly about these people, and their individual roles within the story of The Carls. And even though this story is almost literally just the story of 5 people in mostly just one location, the story feels enormous. It feels enormous because of all the social media, and all the news interviews April does, and the July 13th attacks and the final solution to The Dream. Not only that, but it feels like a story that transcends the individual characters; it's a story about the affect of social media on our social interactions, the affect of fame and reactionary news and the influence of political punditry.
And then there's BFE, a story that, on the surface, is orders of magnitude larger in its scope. It travels all over the world, has superhuman alien AI and cyborgs, industrial espionage, social media smear campaigns, and dystopian economic collapse. It's a big story. But, well, no it's not. It feels like the only people in the world are the characters named in the book, even though that's obviously not true. It also feels like it happens over the course of like five days, even though THAT is obviously not true. I do not have real explanations for why this is true, but it is. And also it's clearly fiction. Like, I know the first book has aliens and a man turning into grape jelly and whatever, but that's honestly ancillary to the real story. BFE is definitely science fiction, and that removes the world from us in kind of a profound way. It has AI controlling people, alien prosthetics that defy understood physics, 8k fully immersive VR (that plays a HUGE part of the book). And these things make the whole story alien (pardon the wordplay). I understand that a book about aliens needs to double down on the aliens in a sequel, and I swear I actually like this book, but it's very different.
But of course, it's not just that.
Another of my "primary" issues is that there are only two characters in the entire second book with agency: Miranda and Carl. Every single other person in the book is literally a pawn in a chess game between Carl and his brother. While this is sort of fun to read, getting to find out all the strings being pulled by Carl and his brother to approach the final confrontation, and unintended consequences of those pulled strings, but also other than those two people, Miranda is literally the only character who takes action in the book entirely on her own. In fact, even Miranda becomes a LITERAL puppet for these alien AI (which, I'll admit, is a pretty good scene). I love these characters, and it is pretty frustrating to watch all of them get moved around the world like game pieces constantly, because the first book was all about their mistakes and their triumphs and their choices. They were complex and flawed people, and in this book they're all just slaves to The Good Times. or, I guess The Bad Times. Or if you're Andy, both. Andy has a hard time in this book. Also Robin doesn't do ANYTHING. I missed Robin so much in this book.
I do have other thoughts about this series, but these two are the main things that keep BFE from being the Remarkable Thing that the first book was. I will probably continue to have new thoughts about this series, both big and small, going forward, but this feels like enough for now.
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