Robert Repino

When I hear a book being touted as "Toy Story meets Stranger Things," I'm going to give it a shot. The problem with comparisons though is that they are not always accurate, and thus they can be misleading. Not always, but in this particular instance I was certainly hoping for more than what I actually got.

Safe. Simplistic. Bland. Meh.

Those are some of the words that come to mind when I think back on my reading of Spark. The further I get from it the more I feel disinterested by it. It's not a bad book by any means. The writing is adept, the story structure is sound, the background lore is interesting, and the characters are fairly dynamic. Yet, I never found myself fully invested in it whilst reading. And I'm still struggling to put my finger on exactly why.

Unlike Toy Story, I didn't feel emotionally connected to any of these characters. It has its poignant moments, but for most of the book I was just turning pages and my heart wasn't into it. And unlike Stranger Things, the monsters were less than terrifying and the action scenes less than gripping. It's hitting the right beats for the story, but not knocking them out of the park or do anything unique. I really enjoy YA horror, but this one wasn't nearly scary or profound enough for me to sink my teeth into.

Thank you to the publisher for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review!… (meer)

I am going to give this book a somewhat unfair review. Unfair because the author danced so close to a line that he dared not cross because doing so would've cost him readers (perhaps many) and possibly getting published, at least by a larger publisher. This book deserves more than a three, but not a four.

Before I get into my philosophical dispute about Mort(e), since I listened to an audio version of the book, I'll say a bit about it. The narrator was Bronson Pinchot, who has quite a few audiobooks under his belt, and justly so. He does a stellar job here. He calibrated the pitch and cadence of his voice exactly as it needed to be for the given situation. His voices of the various characters shone too: consistent, appropriate, believable.

I was finishing [b:The Conspiracy Against the Human Race|8524528|The Conspiracy Against the Human Race|Thomas Ligotti|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1400962805l/8524528._SX50_.jpg|2696709] by [a:Thomas Ligotti|128466|Thomas Ligotti|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1371462738p2/128466.jpg] as I started Mort(e). Ligotti is best known as a writer of horror short-stories -- not in the blood and gore sense, but in the existential, atmospheric sense. In Ligotti's stories, the world horrifies and terrifies the characters more than anything else. The actions of the antagonists serve to make the characters aware of how little the universe cares about them, how easily anything can shatter their perceived safety, and how few heartbeats stand between anyone and death.

Ligotti's writing comes by these characteristics honestly. He is a philosophical pessimist, and Conspiracy is his nonfiction book about said philosophy and the literature and religions related to it. From what I've said so far, you can probably guess a couple of the horror authors he discusses -- Lovecraft and Poe -- and that Buddhism gets some coverage as well as Schopenhauer. The primary basis for this book is the work of a Norwegian philosopher, [a:Peter Zapffe|8111058|Peter Zapffe|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]. Most of his work has not been untranslated (and given how depressing it is, one should not be surprised by this), but an essay in which he sums up his views is available in English: "[b:The Last Messiah|22060860|The Last Messiah (Nihilistic Buddhism, Antinatalism, Pessimism)|Peter Wessel Zapffe|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1399679765l/22060860._SX50_.jpg|41390521]."

Zapffe was one of the harder core pessimists, residing in a camp holding that humans possess an excess of consciousness, for it is this and the awareness it grants that allows us to be horrified. Furthermore, because of this, it is unethical to make more humans. This is necessarily a simplification, and as there is no single, core strain of philosophical pessimism, not all its exponents hold these views. Read Conspiracy and "Messiah" if you want to learn more.

So, back to Mort(e), and skipping a description because you've read the synopsis, and this is already getting long. For the first third and change of this book, I felt as if Mort(e) the character was walking a rather dark, Zapffian path. As he was developing human-level consciousness and then fighting in the war against the humans, and seeing the animals doing terrible things to the humans as well as other animals, he would argue, mostly with his commanding officer, that it was all pointless, that it would end up being just under the control of the Colony as it was under humans. I kept waiting for him to say, or admit to himself, that consciousness was not all it was cracked up to be, that it was the root of the problem.

To a small extent, the book takes this tack, but only to the extent that the animals' intelligence and awareness, run afoul of the plans of the Colony's Queen. (I'm trying to avoid spoilers here, so if you've read this already, forgive the inaccuracies born of vagueness.) Consciousness is a problem for the Queen, not in and of itself.


Most disappointingly, despite being the most aware observer of the horror unleashed on and within the animals (to say nothing of on the world) by elevating them to the level of human consciousness, Mort(e) chooses to uplift (awaken? consciousify?) Sheba, his dear friend from before the war.

Don't get me wrong, it's understandable. Hell, I probably would've done the same thing in his shoes. But it made the story less satisfying in my opinion -- at least steeped as in dark philosophies as my mind is at the moment. But, even absent that mental tea, I think I would've enjoyed it being left unanswered at least. It would give the reader something interesting to chew on. And to be fair, it would have pissed off a lot of readers too, though perhaps fewer in this post-modern age than it would have in earlier times.

I also wonder what Mort(e) would've done if he'd had the option to go back to being a normal cat? It was a far simpler time, lacking awareness of his mortality, living in a safe environment, and able to enjoy simple pleasures like curling up with Sheba in a way he could now only experience in memories.


As I said at the top, this knock is somewhat unfair. Most people don't want to hear that consciousness might be a mistake. Ligotti points this out many times in Conspiracy, and that the question is unanswerable except on a personal level. His sympathies lie on one side of it, of course, but he's wise enough to understand why the people in his camp don't get invited to a lot of parties as well as not to blame those not sending the invites. He wrote Conspiracy as a sort of plea -- a plea that the proposition get a little more airtime, that more people at least consider it even if they don't agree.

And that's where I come down on Mort(e): by delving a bit more into the philosophical realm he was already exploring, Repino would have written much more interesting, discussion-engendering book. Not all books need to be or should be this, but he toed that line so closely (and probably unwittingly, though perhaps he has read Ligotti and Zapffe), that it frustrated me.
… (meer)