Yev's Reviews > Did You Read The News?

Did You Read The News? is an ambitious self-published book that tries to accomplish a lot in relatively few pages, but unfortunately the author isn't quite able to follow through, which is especially evident near the end where both the pacing and melodrama really ramp up. The speed and unevenness of the latter parts of the book are like a runaway train on a coastal mountain that went off the tracks and is now soaring through the air until it makes quite the splash. It would've been better for me instead if proceeded at a leisurely pace and took in the scenery. That's an apt description of how the book goes at the beginning. The early parts remind me of a mix of Maureen F. McHugh's China Mountain Zhang and Bao Shu's What Has Passed Shall in Kinder Light Appear. By that I mean it's about the character's daily life as everything changes around him for the worse, or at least for the different, and he doesn't quite understand why at first.

This is science fiction, though that's mostly to establish the setting. I don't know that I'd quite call it social science fiction, but it's close. Romance plays a significant role, but this isn't a romance book in the way that Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone's This Is How You Lose the Time War was. Possibly the closest description would be that it's a book about coming of age in a collapsing dystopia filled with ethnic conflict and how to survive that regardless of the costs. Horrific and ugly decisions are made out of malice, ignorance, or simply wanting to survive. This isn't misery porn though because it doesn't delight in its tragedies, but rather presents them as The Way Things Are Now.

Almost the entire book takes place in a single city on an outer world whose colonization was supported by all three members of the Triumvirate, the ultimate authorities of humankind. Their approach is questionable and reminded me of the Ekumen in Ursula K. LeGuin's Hainish Cycle if they were instead short-sighted, ineffective, and created various problems for themselves without realizing, or perhaps not caring. The usual sort of world powers stuff.

The story follows a young man throughout the course of his life, which when considering the length of this book has to be by necessity rather condensed. The ambiguous ages and chronology in general are a particular sticking point for me. At the start he's naïve and thoroughly indoctrinated in ideals not dissimilar from North Korea's Juche or other variants of Marxism-Leninism. Those ideals entirely suffuse their society which provides for a somewhat different perspective than usual. The narrative is presented in first person present which ought to allow for more understanding of the protagonist, but his inner thoughts and commentary don't add much. His actions are far greater than anything else and story may suffer for the closeness of its perspective.

This was better than I expected from an author's self-published debut, especially considering how unknown it is. If it had maintained its highest level of quality I could recommend it with some reservations, but as it is, I can't. I don't regret reading it though and I'm open to giving the author another chance, which is more than I can say for a lot of other authors.

Rating: 2.5/5

Disclosure: The author messaged me asking for a review and gifted me a digital copy of the book for me to do so. I wasn't compensated in any other way. I accepted doing so mostly on a whim, but also because he's on my friend list, a member of a group that I founded, and he had a relevant presence elsewhere. More importantly though he was courteous and genial. This write-up was not seen by the author before its posting, though I did provide him my thoughts and criticisms before writing this. His feedback had no affect on what I've written.