Book Review: A Wild and Weird Game-Based Novel from Scotto Moore
Wild Massive, by Scotto Moore (Tordotcom)
In the center of the multiverse, the Building reaches towarda brilliant orange sky. It’s so vast and so tall that no one can count all itsfloors. In fact, there is a guild devoted to mapping and exploring them and thediverse, often weird and deadly cultures that have evolved. Some of these giverise to beings, human and otherwise, possessing combinations of technology and arcanemagical or psychic powers. A large portion of the known Building falls underthe malign auspices of the Association, which has already wiped out one race ofmagic-users and seems bent on destroying a second. The present action beginswhen a shapershifter renegade from the second psychic race lands on top of the semi-sentientelevator inhabited by the sole survivor of the first. From there, the tale rangesfrom supernatural politics, power struggles between uber-cyborg warriors andnear-divine incarnations of creativity, outlaws armed with Plot Twists andCoincidences, vials containing consciousness-altering memories, a writer whocan change the course of history through a screenplay, and so forth, not tomention the bizarre Disney-esque theme park chain, the eponymous Wild Massive.To say the book is chock full of enough creativity to fill an entire shelf ofordinary tomes is an understatement. Therein lies both the strength and theshortcomings of Wild Massive.
First of all, the book is very long. This can be a goodthing or a bad thing, but in this case, the length feels as if it is driven bya need to include an enormous amount of backstory and number of characters. Inthe afterword, the author relates how the story began as a game, morphed into severalplays, and finally settled into a single narrative. As a result, if I wereasked whose story it is and what the central conflict and turning points are, I’dbe hard-pressed. The two characters I described above are nominally theprotagonists, but there are so many point-of-view shifts, each one having to dowith a different character and goal/obstacle, that the center of thebook becomes—and remains--unclear. I would very much have preferred the book bebroken into shorter novels set in the same world but each one centering on adifferent character with their own history, goals, and sorrows.
The complexity of the world of the Building, its history,and its inhabitants is wonderful. It’s full of people, events, and concepts orincarnations, each one of which offers the occasion for stopping the action fordetailed exposition. At the beginning of a long book, a certain amount oforientation is not a bad thing, although perhaps best done by choice of detail,revelation of character, action, and tension. However, Wild Massive isriddled with long explanations, even toward the very end. The effect is apatchwork of ideas and setting, action and character, in which the forwardmomentum gets set aside all too often. A second consequence of the dizzyingshifts and halts is, for me, a loss of connection with the principal characters.I cheered on our protagonists in the battle sequence at Wild Massive Prime(which reminded me of Peter Jackson’s 45-minute tour de force Battle ofHelm’s Deep) but I never felt as if I knew them more than superficially or caredwhether they (or anyone) got together in the end.
Scotto Moore is a writer of immense creativity, well worthchecking out. Some readers will love this book for the same reasons I haddifficulty with it. I look forward to seeing his next, and I hope you will,too.
