Review.

Rabbits

Terry Miles

Pub date: 8 June, 2021
Publisher: Del Rey
Reviewed from personal library

“What the fuck, K”

That quote pretty much sums up most of my reactions to this book. I have to admit I was somewhat trepidatious about this book… a lot of that comes from the cover (I am a total cover snob when it comes to picking books, even though I have a thing for rabbit art ) and some of it comes from the description which just seemed a little trite or maybe even tired: “A deadly underground game might just be altering reality itself…And suddenly, the fate of the entire universe is at stake.” Huh, was I wrong about that. What a great read—pretty much through out the book I was intrigued, spellbound and repeatedly muttering that very sentence…What the fuck?

If I had to sum it up I might say this book is a little like the Netflix series Russian Doll …you could maybe describe it as techno-thriller? Or perhaps it’s a Matrix-esque alternate-reality adventure that continually asks you to shift your perspective on what you perceive? But whatever it is, it was definitely written for me — and what a fantastic, memory-lane-technology romp for a certain demographic…one that just happens to be mine: I mean Coleco football?… I loved that game. What I particularly enjoyed about it was it was chock full of cultural/technological referents that made me feel a part of the story and built a world I was increasingly immersed in, but avoided that sort of exclusionary snobbishness that I often find with over-the-top pop culture fans that want to pretend they are part of an exclusive club. Get the feeling I dislike that sort of thing? I really do.

“We’re living in the twenty-first century, K.”

But this book, set in the present, is a reminder of how far we have come in this technology-driven world and what kind of dangers/moral cesspits we have facing us as that technology becomes more and more present. We live in a world where most technology works (whether deliberately or as a by-product) to separate us from the “real” world; that holds real consequences whether we choose to see them or not and Terry Miles' Rabbits follows that thread to some pretty interesting places. But don’t get me wrong, it’s a fun read. Apparently Miles based the book as an extension of his podcast also name Rabbits and I think I will have to check that out.

I’m not going to summarize the plot, beyond “hero traverses the city (Seattle) to solve a growing mystery and becomes more and more entangled in it” because although I enjoyed the story, it increasingly became extraneous…which, from a plot-obsessed reader like me, is saying something. I loved the characters, I enjoyed the PNW references and I was sucked into the mystery, alternating from trying to guess how the character makes it through, to how the author was going to write his way out of it. Spoiler: all my guess were complete wrong.

So ya, I enjoyed it. And it was a great reminder that a cover doesn’t make or break the book.