It's an average work day. You've been wrapped up in a task, and you check the clock when you come up for air—4:44 pm. You go to check your email, and 44 unread messages have built up. With a shock, you realize it is April 4th—4/4. And when you get in your car to drive home, your odometer reads 44,444. Coincidence? Or have you just seen the edge of a rabbit hole?
Rabbits is a mysterious alternate reality game so vast it uses our global reality as its canvas. Since the game first started in 1959, ten iterations have appeared and nine winners have been declared. Their identities are unknown. So is their reward, which is whispered to be NSA or CIA recruitment, vast wealth, immortality, or perhaps even the key to unlocking the secrets of the universe itself. But the deeper you get, the more deadly the game becomes. …
It's an average work day. You've been wrapped up in a task, and you check the clock when you come up for air—4:44 pm. You go to check your email, and 44 unread messages have built up. With a shock, you realize it is April 4th—4/4. And when you get in your car to drive home, your odometer reads 44,444. Coincidence? Or have you just seen the edge of a rabbit hole?
Rabbits is a mysterious alternate reality game so vast it uses our global reality as its canvas. Since the game first started in 1959, ten iterations have appeared and nine winners have been declared. Their identities are unknown. So is their reward, which is whispered to be NSA or CIA recruitment, vast wealth, immortality, or perhaps even the key to unlocking the secrets of the universe itself. But the deeper you get, the more deadly the game becomes. Players have died in the past—and the body count is rising.
And now the eleventh round is about to begin. Enter K—a Rabbits obsessive who has been trying to find a way into the game for years. That path opens when K is approached by billionaire Alan Scarpio, the alleged winner of the sixth iteration. Scarpio says that something has gone wrong with the game and that K needs to fix it before Eleven starts or the whole world will pay the price.
Five days later, Scarpio is declared missing. Two weeks after that, K blows the deadline and Eleven begins. And suddenly, the fate of the entire universe is at stake.
This book didn't stick the landing for me. The beginning was gripping, and interesting, throwing out cool ideas and a deep conspiracy... but the second half devolved into a lot of thriller plotting, i.e. the phone rings when they walk in the door, it's their friend, when they go to leave, they're being followed, as they escape they find a helpful stranger! etc. Throw in a few teleportations and time cuts and not enough character development and here we are. I enjoyed my time with Rabbits and I'll be checking out the podcast.
This was a fine entry in the 'inspired by House of Leaves' genre. This is a fresher, more modern take which goes by the route of weaving gamer culture into the narrative as the plot engine instead of literary mystery. It starts strongly, really picks up in the middle and then unfortunately has some issues at the end I found. The execution here is pretty good. This whole genre relies on the unreliable narrator trope, you are never entirely sure if the narrator is actually experiencing what is recounted or if they are just mentally ill. It can sink a book if not handled with a certain deftness but it certainly is handled well here. Whilst I thoroughly enjoyed this I do feel it fell to bits a little at the end. There was a degree of rushing it, a degree of a whole plot element brought in from left …
This was a fine entry in the 'inspired by House of Leaves' genre. This is a fresher, more modern take which goes by the route of weaving gamer culture into the narrative as the plot engine instead of literary mystery. It starts strongly, really picks up in the middle and then unfortunately has some issues at the end I found. The execution here is pretty good. This whole genre relies on the unreliable narrator trope, you are never entirely sure if the narrator is actually experiencing what is recounted or if they are just mentally ill. It can sink a book if not handled with a certain deftness but it certainly is handled well here. Whilst I thoroughly enjoyed this I do feel it fell to bits a little at the end. There was a degree of rushing it, a degree of a whole plot element brought in from left field and then totally abandoned to provide a sense of a 'happy ending' and it all just felt a little unsatisfying. This pulled my review score down to a 4 (from a strong 4.5 through most of my reading). It's still a recommend because I found it all very enjoyable despite the ending.
