[Name Redacted] > Recent Status Updates

All right. That's a heck of an opening. A huge revelation, then a hilarious scene where a ninja berates the crew for forcing their ninja stereotypes upon him.

I'm legitimately surprised. I'm not used to game tie-ins being actual LITERATURE. This book is legitimate ART.

Aside from the military sci-fi, aside from the body horror, aside from the internecine squabbling & politicking... This book contains one of the most effective and intelligent depictions of the seductive power of sloth, apathy & lassitude that I have ever encountered. A character is seduced not by rhetoric nor by miraculous displays but by being able to just give up and abandon all discipline and self-interest.

I wonder if some of these turns of fate were determined for the author via dice or the I Ching, because many aren't narratively satisfying at all -- whoooooooooooooole lot of extinctions -- but do feel like the sort of random insanity one might see in a rudderless universe guided by RNGs weighted towards "...and then they went extinct."