Wow, I really seem to have bad luck with books during quarantine. It's like Corona wants to STOP me from reading books...insane! I felt so guilty for taking so long to read this book that I didn't even visit Goodreads anymore, feeling like an undeserving imposter (that, and the fact that I'd procrastinated on my own reviews. My laziness knows no boundaries!) that doesn't have the right anymore to even be looking at books... Hadn't I actually switched gears and set myself reading goals of at leas

Wow, I really seem to have bad luck with books during quarantine. It's like Corona wants to STOP me from reading books...insane! I felt so guilty for taking so long to read this book that I didn't even visit Goodreads anymore, feeling like an undeserving imposter (that, and the fact that I'd procrastinated on my own reviews. My laziness knows no boundaries!) that doesn't have the right anymore to even be looking at books... Hadn't I actually switched gears and set myself reading goals of at least xx pages a day with iron-clad disciplin, I'd still be reading this books 30 years from now on. Not because it's so good that I want to savour every page. Not because I have a thousand other things to do (even though I do and did, Netflix having been a very faithful companion those last few weeks). No. It's because this book is complete and utter SHIT.

You may recheck at this point if I really and actually gave Walkaway 3 stars (2.5 in fact) And yes, I did. I can only explain it with two words: Stockholm Syndrome. This book has held me captive for several unnecessary weeks. It took me two weeks alone for the first 100 pages, that's how terrible it was. I want to write that I've never read a book with such horrible writing, but then I had to remind myself that I've read Deborah Harkness, so it wouldn't be fair to Cory Doctorow. I can and willsay, though, that in terms of first and second place for worst writing, there's not much distance between him and Ms. Harkness. It's a close race, and if I were a bit more of a feminist I'd hate Cory Doctorow even more just for the reason that he writes like the stereotypical "man" that feminists usually (and in this case, rightly) criticize. I hope he felt very smart describing the technological details in the book as complicated as he could've so that even me (who isn't a complete goon when it comes to technology) had no clue what the hell he was talking about most of the time. I felt very stupid while reading Walkaway, and usually I have absolutely no problems reading books in English. It just broke me. At one point my self-esteem was so low and I was so insecure about my comprehension skills, that I actually started to parallel-read the German version, which, unfortunately, wasn't much clearer either. That's because the writing is a catastrophe in both languages, which was only to be expected, given that translations have to stay true to the original quality. There was an unnecessary amount of gratifying sex scenes (the first one spawns over several pages and it was neither erotic nor interesting nor did it serve any story value. It was just DUMB), and the phrasing of sentences in general was beyond terrible. The author can't write to save his life; there were actual writing mistakes in the novel and it's horrible that even a non-native speaker like me can recognise them. Maybe the book could've been better had someone else written it; it definitely couldn't have been worse. But so much was messed up in terms of story in general, that I really can't be too sure. The characters' names alone were a complete and utter joke: the main character Etcetera has twenty names. TWENTY. This was supposed to be funny, but it's not. Then there are actual characters called Limpopo (I know it's a river, but still. It's even funnier because Popo is butt in german), Iceweasel (no kidding) and Kersplebedeb (it took me several tries to spell it correctly; I wonder how many times the author failed at this), and the best thing about it, most of them have the exact same (basic) personalities. The only ones I could actually tell apart from their inner monologue were Etcetera, Seth and Iceweasel, and those were the only ones I actually cared about. The other characters were all the same to me, and often I missed how even spoke what sentence. They felt robotic and lacked any emotional depth that would make them accessible to the reader. The dialogue structure in the book didn't make it any easier; the characters in the novel really like to hear themselves tal, so it's fat paragraph after fat paragraph and you're never sure if it's the same still talking or if this (next) paragraph is (finally) the reply from another person (I did pay attention to the speech characters. It just didn't help!!!). The story idea of an utopian way of living in a society was a good one, but the execution was terrible. Even though it is explained dozens and dozens of (unnecessary) times, it's still not clear how the Walkaway society really (and successfully) functions. Everytime they walk away and build their destroyed or taken homes anew because they don't fight, and nobody ever gets frustrated? Nobody ever thinks just once about cheating and nobody ever cares if their stuff is stolen? I get that it's a philosophy and that many characters continuously have to adapt to it because it's not an easy one, but this is basically utopia. The story idea of making it a technological race between default and utopia over who's first in cheating death by uploading their consciousnesses is quite a trite and uninspiring one, and ulimately I felt cheated myself - but of a good story instead. I can imagine why people love this novel; it's a very communistic one and everyone not in love with today's society can see the value in that. But it's not realistic, and the battering on the rich got old real fast. Don't get me wrong: I hate injustice! The disparity between poor and rich is horrible. But just shitting on the rich whilst making the walkaways saints-like characters isn't the solution. There isn't one problematic walkaway in the novel; NOT ONE. At the beginning there was, and even this character "saw the light" and died a martyr death because of it (because the poor walkaways are always destroyed by the evil rich). What a preachy, cheap, unnecessary way of convincing the readers of his oh-so-great idea of a new society. It read like an advertisement for walkaways, and therefore put me off all the more. And so much stuff in the novel was just plain unnecessary (not only the afore-mentioned sex scenes). I think it's great that there was a trans character included without making too much of a big deal of it, yay to that! But a big nay to mentioning (in the very last chapter of the novel) another character transitioning in one side-sentence (!!!), casually as if this sort of thing happen all the time, after having given absolutely no clue to that character being or having felt trans before. It felt so weird!!! It felt like it was put there more as an anecdote, as some sort of joke, which this should never be. Then there were those absolutely weird time jumps. They happened absolutely randomly and were all the more confusing. I have no problem with time jumps if they're justified and explained well, but we don't even get to know how much time has passed! In one chapter the characters have just been chased out of their homes (luckily, they're walkaways and have no quarrel with that, because they're above everything - you see how that gets annoying?) and the next chapter they suddenly have a home that's even bigger, already conveniently built (by them, but they don't fret hard work, because they're walkaways and better than everyone) How much time has passed? Nobody the fuck knows. You just have to accept it. Some ideas were interesting, I give you that. The idea of uploading everytime you have a cold, and just discarding the "old" body for a new one without a cold (it was only mentioned in a side-sentence, but still) was SO intriguing, as were other ideas (though some of them were really concerning). Most of it, though, was just plain, trite stuff about war, a war of technology and ideology. And that war wasn't even very interesting to read, neither in general nor in detail. All those weapons...I don't care about drones, and mecha robots and what other weapons they used that 1) I can't even pronounce and 2) of which I don't even know what they look like or what they do! The end battle, which was basically just a war of one technological thing against the next, was completely incomprehensible to me and I think it's a cheap trick of making readers feel dumb on purpose. I had no idea what computer stuff they were even doing and I think it was described as inapproachable as possible just so the author can be boastful with his knowledge. This is not fair; and it's not cool. And actually it's exactly the thing he accuses other people of in the book, which makes it even more ironic. Personally, what I most enjoyed were the dynamics between Iceweasel and her father, because her father felt like the only 3-dimensional character in the book and because that was something that didn't have to rely on complicated-written technology. The whole book felt like a circlejerk to the author's skills and his personal views on society; and sex, while we're at it. Obviously there's mostly lesbian sex in the novel because that's hot to write. (don't get me wrong, I'm all for inclusion! But it's so stereotypical of a man to write lesbian sex scenes and not gay scenes; and also, the scene felt like it was written by a man, which is just weird when it's about lesbians). I wish I could write a really good rant-review about the book but I can't. I definitely hated it more at the beginning than in the end, but that's just because I got used to it. That's also the reason I had to give it 3 stars. Still, you shouldn't have to force yourself to get used to a book. Actually, I even had to force myself to even continue reading. Everyone told me to stop while I was still suffering through it. I developed actual anxiety from just looking at the book, it was horrible. Just couldn't even get myself to pick it up until I set myself those goals. Yesterday I was basically high on drugs after having finished it; I still can't believe that I actually beat this book (I don't want to DNF books; it's a principle of mine because I never give up hope that books get better. And some really do!) By now, I'm too tired to even write a rant review though. Reading this book killed many parts of me, and it'll be a long time till I finally won't feel so self-conscious about my English skills. And that's even though I know that the author made mistakes; I even sent pictures of scenes I didn't understand to my friend, asking if it was me or the author (it was the author), and I feel like it's horrible for an author to write in such a purposely convoluted way that it just makes the whole book a confusing, difficult to understand-mess. Cory Doctorow is exactly the kind of person I don't like and want to meet in real life, because I feel like people who make their things inaccessable by choice have some underlyining insecurity issues and need this to feel better about themselves. In the end, this book makes me sad. Sad, because it's so much wasted potential, sad, because it's also wasted a lot of reading time. I deeply regretted reading this book and would recommend it to absolutely no one. The few really interesting ideas and concepts, as well as the few emotional scenes (most of it was extremely robotic) don't make up for the horror and blandness that is the rest of it. A book isn't supposed to destroy you (in the way it destroyed me) during the reading process. It's just such shitty writing on so many levels. The worst thing is, the German translation isn't better, it's even worse, because the translator made SO MANY mistakes! I'd get the complicated parts that I had to fight through myself, but he completely butchered the easy parts instead, thereby completely changing the meaning and implication of the whole sentence! Sometimes, the meaning turned out to be the opposite in the German version than it was in the English one! This books just SUCKS in every language. I'm seriously considering contacting the German publisher about the translation, I have enough photo evidence (and that's even though I didn't start with the pictures until I was 3/4 through) because I feel like it's not fair to German-speaking readers who aren't that proficient in English and have to read it in German. That's why my Mum bought it (who doesn't speak English and hasn't read it yet) and from whom I have borrowed the book when I had difficulties with it myself. This book is incredibly expensive in German (even as an epub-file it's still incredible 15 Euro, which is more expensiv than the English paperback which is an actual copy and not only a virtual one) and has yet translated parts wrong that could've been translated by a high schooler, because those weren't even the complicated sentences. So yeah, I feel frustration with the book on a lot of levels. I feel like the author didn't give a fuck and tried too hard at the same time. I seriously don't understand one person who could give this book more than 3 stars; and honestly, I don't even want to. I really hate this book and I'm glad that I've finished it now. Even though I don't know the author and don't want to judge him too harshly, the way he has written it he repesents everything to me that Zottas represent to Walkaways in the book: preachy, sitting on a high horse, convinced of his privilege as an author as well as a "better person than the rest of us"; I just read parts of his biography and I'm not even surprised he didn't graduated from four different universities. I suspect he's even proud of that, why else put it up for public knowledge? I feel like he used Limpopo's character as a way of putting himself into the novel and presenting himself as some god-like entity, that yes, even though Limpopo and he have problems with craving recognition (his way of making her and himself more "humane" and his implicit bragging more acceptable, because everyone has their faults :(), is better than the rest of society because he doesn't give in to the norms of default. If he thinks he can delude anyone with that, he's up for a rude awakening because I'm sure I'm not the only one who can see the parallels between his personal life and Limpopo's. I'm really sick of authors making themselves part of the novel through a particular character (you're not that important), but it's even worse when theyre adjusting a god-like quality to this certain character. Limpopo is literally described as a superhero and messiah throughout the whole novel. How pathetic is this? So yeah, I am absolutely done with this shit. Terrible plot, terrible writing, terrible everything. Never reading anything by Cory Doctorow again. He doesn't even deserve a proper, well-written rant review. In the end, he would just take it as a compliment.