My first DNF of the year. Because of the structure I don't actually know how much of the book I read (especially as I was reading digitally and so couldn't see physical pages) but I'd guess I got to about the 30% point. This is a really disappointing one, because I really loved The Cartographers and have been looking forward to this for a while.

I've always considered myself a fan of Choose Your Own Adventure style books, but it turns out I only like them when they're a gamebook and not a novel. With a gamebook I feel like I'm playing and making choices to try and win, and it doesn't matter that I'm going to miss bits of the book because the point isn't to see everything but to find the correct route through the thing. With a novel, on the other hand, I don't want to miss anything, and so making a choice feels like being asked "which bits of this book don't you want to read?"

It's been a while since I read it but I remember liking the prose in The Cartographers. That's not the case here. This has the cadence of the worst kind of trashy, highly commercial thrillers. The characters are paper thin, the situations are contrived, and every page just screams "this is a plot-driven novel". I never connected with or liked Marsh, and I found every other character she interacts with to be deeply annoying - especially Talia, who I think we're meant to like but I have no idea why. The constant intrusion of the viewers in their chat window was incredibly annoying, too, and pulled me out of the book every time they appeared.

What a shame.