I had high hopes for this book, the reviews talk about how deep and “mind-bending” it is. Unfortunately, the premise, simulation theory, isn’t at all new. Honestly, the whole idea is like a conversation you have with your college friends while you’re stoned. The idea goes all the way back to Plato. So unless you’ve never thought about existentialism before, this is not going to be new or mind-bending for you.
There are also a lot of places where the plot just falls apart. Does the “architect” need to follow the laws of physics or not? In some scenes, it seems like he doesn’t, he can give some characters super-human strength. He can just conjure new “characters” out of thin air. If he’s that omnipotent, and it wants to stop a character, why can’t he just drop a meteor on their head? Why does he allow a character to create “the cube”.
Speaking of which, “the cube” has to be the clunkiest MacGuffin I’ve ever heard of. Somehow the antagonist is a genius neurosurgeon, while also having the ability to design and engineer a computer system that’s far beyond any technology that’s available today? Again, if “the architect” wanted to stop him, couldn’t he just make the cube malfunction?
The performance was OK. It had kind of a noir detective feel to it, I’m not sure I would have picked that style.