Review: Fractal Noise

Fractal Noise by Christopher Paolini
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

A lot of one star reviews for this book are flat out review bombing. I don't engage in such a practice myself. But while I did give this book a fair shake, I was absolutely not impressed. Even leaving aside the utter ridiculousness of Tor being caught using AI to create the cover art (allegedly by accident, since they simply took from a normally reputable stock photo source, so they said) and Paolini defending it against deserved backlash, this book just doesn't deserve the hype. Paolini said in his afterword that he tried to write this one after finishing the old Inheritance Cycle, and that his initial draft was way too bleak and nihilistic, so he moved on to To Sleep in a Sea of Stars instead. If only he'd left Fractal Noise to molder away in the slush pile of oblivion, because this book belongs there. It's short, but plodding, dull, unfunny (most of the attempted humor comes from a really obnoxious Slavic stereotype named Pushkin who speaks in broken English like a side character on NCIS: Los Angeles, and most of the other characters run on sci-fi stereotypes as well, with a protagonist in mourning, a hyper religious teammate, etc. etc.) While I was never a big fan of Paolini, at least his previous works had heart. This one...let's just say I would be unsurprised if the AI was limited to just the cover. I suspect a lot of the inner artwork might've been AI as well, and there could've been some touch ups the editor might've run on the text, if not Paolini himself. I hate to speculate but...who knows. All I know is, I gave this one a shot and I found this book wanting for even a hint of enjoyment.

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