Oh my god, you're going to just end it there?? WTF

Nice to see PDX featured prominently. Good attempt at a conspiracy but took a while to get there and was kind of secondary to the lives of the characters rotating around the conspiracy.

Many reviews of WTF reference a list of lauded authors whose styles seem to be in the soup of this book - a dash of Pynchon, a touch of Foster Wallace. I didn't know that when I started reading it, as I'd picked it up on the strength of a friend's recommendation, plus one line of a NY Times review that said it was a late contender for 'book of the summer'. But sure enough, as I was reading, I was quickly thinking 'ah, this is like a mix of Zadie Smith (in NW3), Gary Shteyngart (Super Sad True Love Story), Don DeLillo (White Noise)'. And it's an enjoyable mix, if you're willing to go on the ride. The plot is sort of bonkers, sort of not; sort of humorous, sort of not. Shafer isn't trying to be overtly literary in style, but the prose has depth - there are clever turns of phrase that made me pause and enjoy the words as well as the plot. And just like SSTLS, it has left some questions in my mind about the right way to live online life.

I was interested to see that it's been pegged so strongly by some as a Boy Book. I don't know about that. I'm a woman, and it felt like a pretty cross-gender contemporary novel to me, with a balance between interesting characters and strange car chases (if we're going to be wildly stereotypical about female/male preferences). That duality might be why some reviewers felt the book only got going halfway through, and there's no doubt that it accelerates almost unnervingly beyond a certain point, switching from 'hmm, intriguing' to 'whoa, thriller'. Personally, I enjoyed it all, from those early character expositions to the pacy bombast, and I liked watching the plot weave reveal itself. The midpoint shift reminded me a little of other mongrels I'd enjoyed, like Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five. There were a couple of places where the writing felt a little deliberate - I remember multiple evocative similes describing a man half in and half out of a too-small sleeping bag, where a single one would probably have been more powerful. But those moments were forgiveable and few.

When I finished the book, I agreed with many other reviewers in feeling the ending was a bit of a squib. That docked the book's rating by half a star for me, but not by more than that given the rest of the book's pleasures. And - especially with a few weeks of reflection - I do think it was smarter of the author to write a character-focused ending rather than a wildly bombastic denouement, which I'm sure he could have done equally well. I liked the fact that he took us back to the human heart of the narrative.

So it's an odd book, such a smorgasbord that it might be hard to follow other people's advice about whether you'll like it or not. I certainly thought it was a good read (so to speak), and am missing its craziness now that I've finished it. For balance, my next book should probably be a historical novel set before the telephone was invented.

[Update: I came back to this review to upgrade the rating from a fulsome 4* to a 4.5/5*, because I couldn't stop talking about the book for 2 weeks after reading it, and because in retrospect I can't see any other way the book could have ended without being trite. And my next book was indeed a historical novel without telephones: The Sisters Brothers. Also very good indeed.]

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot was what happens when someone has an essay topic - we should be concerned about data privacy - and then turns it into a novel, just because. There was just no story here. There were some good characters and a handful of interesting set pieces, and a nice writing flourish or two. But the plot, the world, the pacing, and the structure were all so thin and so frustrating.

The book is told through three point-of-view characters: Leila, a nonprofit worker in Myanmar; Leo, ... a guy who... drinks?; and Mark, a sellout author of a self-help book. But the book would be much better off getting rid of two of the points-of-view (literally any two, it doesn't matter). Because all the additional points-of-view do is dispel any genuine sense of mystery in the plot and, somehow, add so much unnecessary confusion.

And the world of the novel is so thinly explained that every plot beat feels entirely unearned. The book sets up two shadow organizations. Each of these organizations are at times, all powerful, and at times, entirely in the dark. The reach and capabilities of the organizations seem to depend only on what is convenient for the plot in any moment. It's a maddening inconsistency for a novel whose emotional arcs turn so critically on the overreach of corporations and governments.

A good book. I absolutely LOVED the ending. More books need to end like that. Now, just don't write a sequel.

The only thing that I didn't like is that it ends. I want more!

Very enjoyable book. Really picks up about halfway through. The chapters set in OR were especially enjoyable for me, as I recognized many of the spots that were important to the plot.

An interesting concept that took a little too long to build up and then ended rather abruptly. I give the author credit, because as far as I know it's not part of a planned trilogy or series, which is quite the rarity these days

As I do with many books, I picked this up because I wanted to read it before the new movie came out. Turns out, I grabbed the wrong damn book. Same name as the movie but not even remotely the same subject.

Also, a book without a real ending? I do not find this dynamic storytelling. I find it to be lazy.