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Rating: 4 stars

For such a short read, 'All Systems Red' is fully conceptualised and packs a punch with its fun, funny and fast-paced storyline.

Cover: 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Writing: 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Storyline: 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Main character(s): 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Secondary characters: 🌟🌟🌟
Narration & Audio: 🌟🌟🌟

"you may have noticed, I don’t care."

I was quickly drawn in by the lovable characters and their fascinating yet relatively simple world. As the fast-paced, action-packed tale unfolds, a clever mystery emerges, raising the stakes and leading to a surprisingly intense climax. However, what truly makes this novella shine is the witty writing and the main character, Murderbot. With an endearing mix of awkwardness, sarcasm, and an unexpectedly kind heart, Murderbot made the story engaging and relatable. The remaining characters serve their purpose in advancing the plot but did not leave a lasting impression, especially with their unconventional names that made them tricky for me to remember.Β 

"Yes, talk to Murderbot about its feelings. The idea was so painful I dropped to 97 percent efficiency."

Only the listening experience fell a bit short for me as the mostly monotone delivery made the audiobook less engaging. However, it was fitting for the narrative.


You can also find more of my thoughts and discussion questions on !"

""No one lives at the edge of calamity without secretly wishing to be destroyed."

"I had written two books of over eighty thousand words each, and yet it was the single minute of ranting with the head of a sheep that had given me all the love and attention I’d ever craved."

The Book of Ayn is a very funny, very self-aware and VERY niche satire that will probably only resonate as something "real" to those who dwell in a particular corner of the Internet. The experience of interacting with someone who sees Ayn Rand as someone worth having feelings about AND as a figure who is a legitimate threat to civility and progressivism, is not as common as this novel's narrator assumes it to be. Your ability to connect with this book will probably depend on your exposure to certain online phenomena: TikTok, deepfakes, Red Scare & their flankers, online critics being more famous than artists, Twitter microcelebrities.

The emotional center of the story-- whether it pays to be self-serving rather than self-sacrificing as we live through a very sacrificial moment in history-- can sometimes feel like a fake problem, a big "who cares." I adored Freiman's sense of humor and pacing, and The Book of Ayn is strongest when looking outward and diagnosing the culture. There are a lot of really outstanding lines in here about generational divides, the boringness of modernity, the stupid feedback loop of pop culture. Freiman's narrator serves as a stand-in for a lot of familiar "edgy" Internet personalities-- people who can't help kicking hornets' nests then acting incredulous when they get stung. It's very satisfying to see this impulse explored so plainly, and in such a funny way. Freiman's weird, scatological imagery is so memorable in the first half of the book.

Unfortunately, for me, once this book loses Ayn (and a fondness for her ideas), it loses momentum. The narrator abandons her research and creative process developing a Bojack-Horseman-style Ayn-Rand-inspired TV show after what I thought were some pretty tame negative responses from acquaintances; and flees to a culty, spiritual commune where the goal is ego death. This makes The Book of Ayn feel like a different book entirely, like I was starting from scratch with a brand new character I knew almost nothing about. It was hard to maintain interest in this narrator who seemed defined only by petty grievances and a self-destructive streak. It doesn't help that the tone of the book seems to shift pretty dramatically once the commune is introduced-- introspective and vague, and not especially funny. Nothing nearly as concretely expressed in the book's first half.

The narrator's pettiness and self-destructiveness is sort of the point of the entire novel-- and as the narrator makes more and more transparently stupid choices, you do feel that subconscious death drive that so many millennials/Gen Z's seem to have. I just wish this very human idea was assigned to a character that felt more perceptive-- more Randian. There's no real judgement on Rand's ideas by the end, and essentially a return to self-interested form for the narrator. The second half of the book feels like a long, unnecessary diversion in this sense-- I found myself wishing she'd stuck to her guns and just MADE something, whether people liked it (or her) or not.

Still very much worth a read if you run in these circles or have felt worried about how nihilistic and "unreal" things are becoming.

Thanks to Catapult for the ARC <3"