[book post] Unsong by Scott Alexander
Dec. 4th, 2020 07:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
queenlua“Wow, Lua, I thought you said literally one post ago that you don’t do serial webfiction—” DID I MENTION HOW WEIRD THIS MONTH HAS BEEN. IT HAS BEEN SO WEIRD.
Prior to diving in, I only vaguely knew this as “the webnovel that the SSC dude wrote with tons of kabbalah lore,” and I only vaguely knew kabbalah as “that thing that Final Fantasy 7 stole the name Sepiroth from.” I’m still not sure I know kabbalah, actually?—I mean, I now know a ton about the author’s super trippy fun sci-fi take on kabbalah, but who knows how much that corresponds to the actual mystical tradition :P
The novel's setup, and all its associated worldbuilding, is tremendous fun. tl;dr, This is an alternate history where the Apollo 8 mission began its orbit around the moon in 1968 and... then it crashed into the celestial sphere surrounding earth, because it turns out everything the Bible said about how astronomy/history/physics works was 100% correct and literally true, sorry about that, and now that you’ve banged up the celestial sphere it’s all gonna get weird and the Names of God are going to have magical powers again, except copyright law is gonna intersect really strangely with those names, and—okay, yeah, the Goodreads teaser takes it from there.
This setup is a fabulous medium for: AMAZINGLY goofy takes on Nixon and Reagan, poor beleagueredsysadmin archangel Uriel who’s just tryin’ to hold this crazy planet together & keep people from boiling goats in their mothers’ milk, a hilarious running bit that dunks on a mall in South Dakota, an epic showdown of Demons vs The People Of New York in which an old rabbi converts the Statue of Liberty into a golem and saves the day...
This setup is less fabulous for, uh, a plot that moves. About halfway through I was like, “okay, so surely the exposition will be done soon?” and, nah, it never really ends. If I had less of an impatient-adrenaline-junkie mindset I could imagine being fine with that—I think most people who really enjoy serial fiction aren’t as impatient as I am to have something happen, to know where this is all going, etc, but it wasn’t entirely to my tastes. But like, in a way that made me sad I couldn’t dig it more, because again, the world is SO FUN, I would ABSOLUTELY do a pen & paper RPG campaign in this world, but the story was a solid “eh” for me.
Prior to diving in, I only vaguely knew this as “the webnovel that the SSC dude wrote with tons of kabbalah lore,” and I only vaguely knew kabbalah as “that thing that Final Fantasy 7 stole the name Sepiroth from.” I’m still not sure I know kabbalah, actually?—I mean, I now know a ton about the author’s super trippy fun sci-fi take on kabbalah, but who knows how much that corresponds to the actual mystical tradition :P
The novel's setup, and all its associated worldbuilding, is tremendous fun. tl;dr, This is an alternate history where the Apollo 8 mission began its orbit around the moon in 1968 and... then it crashed into the celestial sphere surrounding earth, because it turns out everything the Bible said about how astronomy/history/physics works was 100% correct and literally true, sorry about that, and now that you’ve banged up the celestial sphere it’s all gonna get weird and the Names of God are going to have magical powers again, except copyright law is gonna intersect really strangely with those names, and—okay, yeah, the Goodreads teaser takes it from there.
This setup is a fabulous medium for: AMAZINGLY goofy takes on Nixon and Reagan, poor beleaguered
This setup is less fabulous for, uh, a plot that moves. About halfway through I was like, “okay, so surely the exposition will be done soon?” and, nah, it never really ends. If I had less of an impatient-adrenaline-junkie mindset I could imagine being fine with that—I think most people who really enjoy serial fiction aren’t as impatient as I am to have something happen, to know where this is all going, etc, but it wasn’t entirely to my tastes. But like, in a way that made me sad I couldn’t dig it more, because again, the world is SO FUN, I would ABSOLUTELY do a pen & paper RPG campaign in this world, but the story was a solid “eh” for me.
