This is a deeply serious and not at all fuckfest of a sci-fi book dealing with the crippling moral quandary of parallel universes and the existential drama of your alternate reality double being hot as fuck somehow. August Blackthorn, modern time, is confronted with August Blackthorn, Future Time, who has invented a particle accelerator to hop worlds for angsty reasons but didn’t realize that he can only exist in these worlds for like two weeks before the get destroyed and he has to hop to the next one! Whoopsies! Mass murder!

The book only distinguishes them as Good August (modern) and Bad August (mass murderer on accident). In text neither of them has the decency to be Gus or Auggie or something, they’re both just August. Bad August is trying to figure out a way to fix his world-destroying fuck-up and restore all the other universes, but once he falls into the universe with Good August and realizes he’s a jacked karate instructor in this world he loses the plot immediately in favor of lusting over ….himself. And listen he had 300+ universes to get used to the idea of doubles but Good August jumps on the fuck train surprisingly quickly. Like fellas I appreciate the self-love and all but this world destroying thing is kinda urgent right……in fact them fucking actually accelerates the world ending! Whoopsies!

This book is completely ridiculous and way too long for what it is but honestly I did mostly have a good time lmao. The ending was a cop-out and I’m not even gonna touch on the whole Good August ex being a Bon Jovi cover artist who has two PhD groupies that also help in this escapade?? That was frustrating. Ultimately idk man if you wanna read about two guys who are the same guy but kinda different boning in various dimensions while they try and fake science their way out of the situation go for it. My library only had the audiobook but the narrator was surprisingly decent. Overall a fine piece of literary fiction that will surely make the Booker Shortlist next year.

Creature