Wolves, Simon Ings

I got a surprising amount of the way into this when I realised that I really couldn’t care less, because it spends so much time looping round itself, I was too busy trying to figure out what some of the sentences even meant. I returned the copy I had to the library, so I can’t quote one, but there were plenty of sections where I felt that the point was not to get across a point, but to be flowery and pretentious. Eh. I kept waiting for the “terrifying thriller” parts to kick in; the brilliant new technology described in the summary and whatever would make the book stand out.

A third of the way in, I was still waiting, and meanwhile I was hanging around with characters who seemed opaque, pointless, uncaring and not worth caring about. There’s a line or two here and there that does work — the concept of falling in love, first, with the world a person inhabits, the things they surround themselves with, and then with the person. Or not. But, eh. Not interested in simply contemptible characters, and I didn’t feel pity or interest or anything else for them.

Rating: 1/5