Reviewed:
This is the first installment of a coming-of-age saga, or as I like to think of it, “Johnny Pulaski: The High School Years.” And those years, they are eventful.
Johnny is an appealing young man, with just enough charm to pull off what he gets away with. His storytelling voice is excellent, and the narrative framing, giving context to why he’s writing this, is almost perfect — “almost,” because it falls down hard with the last sentence. Which kinda highlights that, actually, the story as a whole falls down at the end.
(I try to minimize spoilers in reviews, but it’s impossible to explain this without at least some details. If you hate spoilers, skip to the last paragraph.)
The last two or three chapters are emotionally weird. Johnny’s committed polycule is splintering apart and he has basically no reaction to this. He does at least respond emotionally in the moment when the twins do something stupid, but there’s otherwise no visible aftereffect on their relationships. This is in stark contrast to the rest of the tale, where our narrator details the reactions and emotions of both himself and his partners. It’s like, when Johnny decided to forgo university, he not only checked out of academics but the story itself. He’s not flat-affect about everything, though, only about certain subjects — including his supposed committed romantic relationships. I realize this is an installment in an ongoing series and this may get rectified in the next one, but as an ending of a “chapter” (as he calls it) it’s deeply unsatisfying.
Slightly sidewise of this but possibly symptomatic of the same root cause, the results of the Ireland trip go nowhere. This bugged me more than it probably should, but the narrative lump made a kink in an otherwise smooth story arc.
So, yeah. An otherwise excellent story with a flawed ending. I’m definitely continuing with the next installment.