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Notes -
I enjoyed it, but this was long enough ago that I can’t remember most of the plot beats. I don’t believe there was an obvious inflection point aside from the finale.
Contrast something like Worm, where I can comfortably say “push through the first arc!” Or “If you got to Leviathan and weren’t sold, it’s not for you.”
That's exactly the sort of contrast I was thinking of. I personally liked Worm from the start, but I had to tell my kids "wait until chapter 5 before we decide whether to finish reading this or not" about Mother of Learning.
Are there really people who need to read like 25% of Worm before they're hooked? That would finally be something to tie with Babylon 5 as the world champion of Most Difficult Fiction To Recommend. "Just spend 15 hours or so on this so you don't miss important backstory, and then, THEN it really gets good! Unless it's just not to your taste after all, in which case I'll be out of town for a while; I can come back when you're no longer enraged."
Couldn’t say. In a rare exercise of self-awareness, I never actually told a doubter to stick with it through Arc 8. But if someone had read that far and then asked if it were going to get better, I’d confidently tell them no.
Worm had me from the beginning. It was also my gateway from Potter fanfic to a broader world of rationalfic, and then the LessWrong and Scott spheres. So I guess I was pretty invested.
I do think it had the Tvtropes page that said something like, “for those skeptical of high school fiction, it quickly moves on to the far more pleasant setting of a bombed-out city.”
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