Khanh the Killjoy

DNF at 75 pages, because I just don't care. Skimmed the next hundred or so pages, and concluded that I made the right decision in DNFing.

This book was a complete waste of my time. It gave me a headache. Over a thousand people die? I just Do. Not. Care. This is a book that focuses on the delivery, and not the plot, and it disengaged with me from the very beginning. It is all telling, no showing.

This is what I can tell you from having read 75 pages of this book. That's roughly...16% of the book?.

- So far, I haven't personally met any of main characters involved in said plane crashes.

- So far, I feel no emotion for the plane crashes, and over 1,000 people died.

- So far, there has been a number of narrators, all of them unconnected personally, almost all of them are new characters. I don't know if they'll appear again or not. They are mostly faceless.

This is a book about an author writing a book about plane crashes which references other books. It features interviews, very unconvincing Skype chats, excerpts from books writteb from families and the personel involved.

That's too fucking meta for me. Sorry.

I can't stand the epistolary style, and I'm confused as hell. It's the same reason I couldn't get further than a few chapters of World War Z. Where the fuck are my main characters? There are so many characters that I can't keep them straight. There is no single narrator. Nearly every character in every single chapter is new. It's just me, of course, I need a main character. I like a traditional style of writing, and this book was not for me.

There's just no emotion, and that's rather sad. This book was published soon after the tragedy of the real-life Flight 370 that disappeared. Hypothetically, I should have felt something reading about the plane crashes in this book. Nope. Zip. Nada.

We read about the plane crashes from the people involved, the families of the survivors, of the deceased. The rescue personnel. I feel absolutely nothing for them. I don't care about them. I want my motherfucking mystery.

This is the book's structure: It is told through the POVs of fuck knows how many people. The first chapter in this book is the internal narrative of a shy, overweight, neurotic American woman.

Truth is, she hadn’t dared use one of the bathrooms at the airport. What if she found herself face to face with one of those futuristic toilets she’d read about in the guidebook and couldn’t figure out how to flush it? What if she accidentally locked herself inside a stall and missed her flight?

70+ pages later, we have yet to hear from her again.

The next chapter is presented to us as excerpts from a book. Complete with a "Note from the author" section telling us about the tragedy of January 12, 2012 and how she compiled this book.

I decided that if I was going to add my voice to the mix, the only way forward was to collate an objective account, letting those involved speak in their own words. To this end, I have drawn from a wide variety of sources, including Paul Craddock’s unfinished biography, Chiyoko Kamamoto’s collected messages, and interviews personally conducted by me during and immediately after the events in question.

The "author" of this book is not Sarah Lotz, it's a made-up author named Elspeth Martins.

The next few chapters are presented through the form of a Skype chat the likes of which I've never seen before, because the entire chapter is written in entire well-formatted, well-written paragraphs. Then there is the "book" written by a B-grade TV actor "guardian" of one of the child survivors (whom we've yet to meet, by the way) --- who likes talking about himself far too much.

I’m often asked, ‘Paul, why did you take on the full care of Jess? After all, you’re a successful actor, an artiste, a single man with an erratic schedule, are you really cut out to be a parent?’

I’d gone off the rails a bit in my mid-twenties after a severe professional disappointment. I was in the middle of filming the pilot for Bedside Manner, which was being dubbed as the UK’s next hot hospital drama, when I got the news they were cancelling the series. I’d won the part of the main character, Dr Malakai Bennett, a brilliant surgeon with Asperger’s syndrome, a morphine addiction and a tendency towards paranoia, and the cancellation hit me hard.

Do. Not. Care.

After skimming the book, I came upon some more gems...in particular, some terribly unconvincing chat transcripts between a popular Japanese gamer (Chiyoko and her boy toy otaku Ryu). Who uses way too many emoticons.

RYU: Σ(O_O;)!
RYU: _|7O



Who talks on 2-chan. I've never seen 2-chan so...competent. I've never seen 2-chan give such good advice. It's like it's not fucking 2-chan at all.

NAME: ANONYMOUS85
Get the weapons loaded.
NAME: ANONYMOUS337
Train that princess in your sights.
NAME: ANONYMOUS23
Locked and loaded, SIR!
NAME: ANONYMOUS111
First, we gotta help Orz get out of his room.
NAME: ANONYMOUS47
Orz. Some good advice:
1. Clean yrself up so that u look as presentable as possible. No bed hair or pimples.
2. Go to Uniqlo and get some good clothes nothing flashy.
3. Go and see The Princess.
4. Offer to buy her dinner.
5. At dinner, tell her how you feel.
That way, even if she cuts you off, you will have no regrets.

It might be the case that later on in the book, the plot comes together. I will actually know what's going on. The story will be compelling, the characters fabulously drawn. I don't care. I'm not hanging around to find out.