In the center of the multiverse, the Building reaches toward a brilliant orange sky. It’s so vast and so tall that no one can count all its floors. In fact, there is a guild devoted to mapping and exploring them and the diverse, often weird and deadly cultures that have evolved. Some of these give rise to beings, human and otherwise, possessing combinations of technology and arcane magical or psychic powers. A large portion of the known Building falls under the malign auspices of the Association, which has already wiped out one race of magic-users and seems bent on destroying a second. The present action begins when a shapershifter renegade from the second psychic race lands on top of the semi-sentient elevator inhabited by the sole survivor of the first. From there, the tale ranges from supernatural politics, power struggles between uber-cyborg warriors and near-divine incarnations of creativity, outlaws armed with Plot Twists and Coincindences, vials containing consciousness-altering memories, a writer who can change the course of history through a screenplay, and so forth, not to mention the bizarre Disney-esque theme park chain, the eponymous Wild Massive. To say the book is chock full of enough creativity to fill an entire shelf of ordinary tomes is an understatement. Therein lies both the strength and the shortcomings of Wild Massive.

First of all, the book is very long. This can be a good thing or a bad thing, but in this case, the length feels as if it is driven by a need to include an enormous amount of backstory and number of characters. In the afterword, the author relates how the story began as a game, morphed into several plays, and finally settled into a single narrative. As a result, if I were asked whose story it is and what the central conflict and turning points are, I’d be hard-pressed. The two characters I described above are nominally the protagonists, but there are so many point-of-view shifts, each one having to do with a different character and goal/obstacle, that the center of the book becomes—and remains--unclear. I would very much have preferred the book be broken into shorter novels set in the same world but each one centering on a different character with their own history, goals, and sorrows.

The complexity of the world of the Building, its history, and its inhabitants is wonderful. It’s full of people, events, and concepts or incarnations, each one of which offers the occasion for stopping the action for detailed exposition. At the beginning of a long book, a certain amount of orientation is not a bad thing, although perhaps best done by choice of detail, revelation of character, action, and tension. However, Wild Massive is riddled with long explanations, even toward the very end. The effect is a patchwork of ideas and setting, action and character, in which the forward momentum gets set aside all too often. A second consequence of the dizzying shifts and halts is, for me, a loss of connection with the principal characters. I cheered on our protagonists in the battle sequence at Wild Massive Prime (which reminded me of Peter Jackson’s 45-minute tour de force Battle of Helm’s Deep) but I never felt as if I knew them more than superficially or cared whether they (or anyone) got together in the end.

Scotto Moore is a writer of immense creativity, well worth checking out. Some readers will love this book for the same reasons I had difficulty with it. I look forward to seeing his next, and I hope you will, too.

Thanks to Scotto Moore, Macmillan-Tor/Forge and Netgalley for access to the advanced review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Great concept of a massive, seemingly endless tower with politics, intrigue, ancient history, and how the decisions and actions made long ago can still have repercussions today. I liked the core story and the primary characters but some of the background material made the story drag for me.

Posted to Goodreads manually due to technical issues:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/edit/60784303

I requested this for consideration for Book Riot's All the Books podcast for its release date. After sampling several books out this week, I decided to go with a different book for my review.

Wild Massive's best trait is how incredibly original it is. An alternate set of realities which is a massive skyscraper full of elevators taking people to different places? Owned now by a corporate and angelic committee? With atrocities being committed and a media empire determined to present history as fiction but also not sweep them under the carpet??

It's -- incredible. The characters and writing are fantastic as well -- everyone has strong motivations and unique behaviour and it's a charming, charming read.

The one thing that keeps it from being a five star read for me is simply that the POV switches carried SO much history with them that I found it something that took me a long time to get through, because each break felt like a place to put the book down -- if that makes sense.

Nevertheless fantastic.

Imagine the universe is a collection of floors in a very tall building. To travel between worlds, you need to know the location of the elevators. Wild Massive is a spectacular science fiction novel full of aliens, humans, alternate realities, superpowers, and more. It is a novel that will make your brain hurt trying to keep it all together - but in an enjoyable way.

The best part of this book is the world-building. It is spectacularly full of familiar concepts put together in a unique way to tell a fantastical story - a true fantasy sci-fi.

The writing is also fantastic. The characters are well-developed and intriguing. They are diverse in terms of race and abilities, making them both familiar and not all at the same time.

I really enjoyed this book and highly recommend it. Although, read through the description first, as not everyone may enjoy the ride.

Every now and then a book comes along that is definitively hard to describe. Anything by Jasper Fforde is an excellent example. And Wild Massive is a story just like that. It is ostensibly SFF, but the world is wholly unique. To say it has cosmic buildings housing multiple planes of existence, elevators with personalities and priorities, and a Disney-alike that’s filming the definitive history of the universe barely scratches the surface. But for all the wild and whimsical world building, at its heart, Moore’s story is about oppressed peoples trying to define their own narratives while the forces of colonialism and capitalism duke it out like kaiju overhead. It’s brilliant, it constantly surprised me, and I loved the characters.

***Update. I've moved my review from 4 stars to 3 stars. I still had a few chapters left when I wrote the review above. Unfortunately, I had really mixed feelings about the ending. It was largely satisfying narratively, but I was really disappointed their wasn't any resolution for Carissa, Rindasay, Andasir, or the rest of the Shai-Manak. Even the survivors of the Dimension Force. I wanted a bit more than, "they did or didn't survive the battle," considering they were characters we were with for most of the story.

I picked this next book up on a bit of whim while browsing through NetGalley last year. The cover is striking, but the concept really drew me in. It gnawed at me with its really big feelings of “this is going to be weird, but bare with me.” Wild Massive, by Scotto Moore, is an incredible, delightfully messy romp that accomplishes most of its aims while being a truly fun ride.

Imagine there was a desert, and in that desert existed not just a building, but the building. A near infinite skyscraper comprising 50,000 floors, each with its own biome, world, set of cultures, or even just a blank slate. And this building is also populated by a brand of theme parks, a large governmental body known as the Association, the agents of Storm and Desire, and a curious race of shapeshifting wizards. Carissa, the last surviving Brilliant, is traversing the backstages of this building, she just happens to get in the way of a massive sneak attack by the shapeshifting wizards on the Association, forcing her to reckon with her own past. And amidst all of the technological wonders and magical marvels that populate the building, sits Tabitha Will, and her ability to see one day into the future by writing a book.

I know I start a lot of reviews off with, “I don’t know where to begin with this review,” but Wild Massive might truly be one of the few times where it’s hard to pick a starting point. I could wax on about its meta-commentary on the art of storytelling, or how it lampoons the big multiverse spanning super-hero mega franchises, while also giving them a loving wink. I could describe how the mere fact that the chapters are separated into seasons and episodes opened up so much more mental leeway for exposition pockets that served both as world building and long elaborate jokes with varied timelines for payoff. It’s also a clever book full of amazing one liners that hit more often than they miss, and characters that are named exactly what their roles would be; three cheers for Agent Pivotal Moment.

The book is, as I said, delightfully messy. Moore cannot help but constantly introduce new ideas that fit the moment perfectly, but still require a bit of setup. He never seems to get fully carried away luckily, but there were some times where I felt fatigued. Thankfully, by the time one reaches the later sections of the novel, there is less of this as all the weird and whimsical stuff has already been offered, and it’s time to take the coaster downhill. I’m not kidding, while the majority of episodes are nice bite size chunks, there is an incredible climactic battle that dwarfs the rest of the episodes in page count. But it doesn’t overstay its welcome. It feels earned and all of the little pieces come together in a mesmerizing display of fireworks. It made me feel things that I would not normally feel in similar superhero stories, and I found myself laughing out loud, a lot.

I will say, if you aren’t a fan of funny books, this one may be tough to swallow. Moore manages to balance subtle satire with absurd dad jokes, puns, and commentary on story crafting. Your mileage may vary as well depending on the kind of humor you enjoy, along with the types of things you like to make fun of, but I had a blast with it. It’s ironic with moments that lead into sardonic, yet incredibly sentimental about the things it targets. It’s an irreverent book that doesn’t take itself seriously, but treats its subject matter with clear love. Moore seems to recognize that he’s having fun, and not trying to tear things down. Instead, he uses humor and irony to pick apart things we take for granted within these more streamlined commodified stories. It’s not all crap, but Moore spends time picking at the motives for these kinds of stories more than just taking cheap shots. It made the humor have staying power, while also forcing me to consider what exactly I found funny, which is a weird place to be in when reading a comedy science fiction book about a 50,000 floor skyscraper. I also loved Wild Massive for that aspect, which some people may have a hard time dealing with.

The characters were honestly pitch perfect. They aren’t the most growth oriented characters, and while Moore shies away from digging too deep into their interior lives, he makes them feel that they have a stake in their world. While I generally like a little more interior life, Moore invested me fully into almost every character, be it main, side or even bit character. They all felt as if they had lives outside the narrative he was telling, even though in some cases they explicitly did not. The agents were all wonderful, even if they were sociopathic. Carissa and Rindasy had an excellent dynamic as they smashed through the floors of the building. Again, three cheers for the best bit character I have ever read, Agent Pivotal Moment who is perfect in every way, no notes.

What it really comes down to for Wild Massive, is that the story feels like it tries to be about everything, without feeling like it is actually about everything. There are stories about colonialism, capitalist drudgery, finding one’s role within the wider universe, and the joy of theme parks even if they can be a little fucked up and used to tell untruths and weave propagandistic narratives. It’s also about a goddamn 50,000 story skyscraper, inside an infinitely looping desert, with time machines, elevators that transport you to your destination, and a chasm that separates the topmost floors from the other 49,950 floors. Oh also you can break the windows, and travel outside it, and there are fire escapes. It’s an insane attempt to make art about both the individual process of making art, and the corporate need to usurp the process for profit and perfecting the creative process. But it’s also a fun heartwarming tale about two fugitives trying to find safety from the people trying to kill them.

I don’t really know how else to critique such a massive book. I don’t really see areas where it needs improvement but even though I found myself adoring it despite and because of its flaws, I still found myself needing to take breaks from it to recharge. It’s really hard to distill Wild Massive into a single idea. I don’t even want to try because even Moore doesn’t seem to want it to be one thing. Even if that one thing is a “metaphor,” there is literal commentary in the book about how it’s impossible for it to only be one thing. So, amongst this shifting, metamorphosing, sprawling narrative that covers no less than 50,000 different floors, who can I say this book is for? It’s for anyone who wants to play around with the world of creativity and who isn’t afraid to get dirty in the sandbox. It’s for people who still like superheroes conceptually, but sometimes find the current offerings lacking. It’s for people who want something different that might push the boundaries on what they are willing to accept from an author in terms of shenanigans. It is a labor of love, of several different projects Moore has tried in various different forms, and he’s found a home for them here, and boy is it welcoming.

Rating: Wild Massive - 8.5/10
-Alex

An ARC of this book was provided to me by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The thoughts on this book are my own.

this was just such a strange book and not in a good way i don’t think… i liked the writing but that’s about all i can say for the story.

This is a fun, weird read! I have a deep love of weird sci-fi and Wild Massive by Scotto Moore is a fantastic weird read. Wild Massive opens with no explanation of what is happening surroundings-wise, but you quickly get into the strangeness of the elevator setting when a shapeshifter falls on the roof of Carissa's elevator room/car. Seriously, if you want a fun sci-fi read, Wild Massive is for you. The only reason I didn't give this 5 stars is that it is silly and silliness doesn't lend itself well to lyrical writing.

Wild Massive is a vast, sprawling, wildly audacious, and totally charming ride (in an elevator) throughout the labyrinth of a cheerfully impossible skyscraper of unusual (infinite) height.

Carissa lives in a stolen elevator somewhere above the 500k floors controlled by "the Association." She's staying out of their reach because she's the last living member of the Brilliant, a group of psionically powerful humans the Association wiped out. The Shai-Manak are a race of alien sorcerer shapeshifters living in a pocket universe on a floor they've kept hidden somewhere in the uncharted levels above the Association, and the Wild Massive is a theme park that exists on a number of the world/floors/pocket universes and their very best ride reenacts the destruction of Carissa's world. They're looking forward to seeing how that story turns out so they can finish the ride, and they're not above putting their thumbs on the scale of destiny to make sure the outcome is exciting, and just maybe...just.

When a member of the Shai-Manak crashes onto the top of Carissa's elevator it's a sign that all three worlds are about to collide in a very noisy way.

Does your head hurt yet? Don't worry, just sit back and let this cross-dimensional elevator take you along for the ride. Maybe we elevator's AI could play something soothing?

Scotto Moore is the author of Battle of the Linguistic Mages (2022) and Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You (2019) and loves mixing genres and creating fast-paced havoc with a healthy dose of irreverent humor in the mix. Highly Recommended.

(From my Amazing Stories column: Science Fiction To Look For – February 2023)

Le sigh, I so badly wanted to love this one. Was sure I would love it, frankly, because the premise is so unique and sounds incredible. It started off a little too out there for me to really understand what was happening, but I gave it some time, because obviously you can't judge a book by a few pages. But look, I was confused. I felt like.. like I was somehow simultaneously getting too much and too little information? Like there were infodumps that made it feel a bit like a slog, but also, I hadn't the foggiest idea of what was happening.

So I set it aside, as one does. Intending on perhaps trying again. But then I read some reviews, and I saw several that stated that the ending was unsatisfying/didn't tie up very many ends, and that was when I had to call it. Nearly 500 pages, I was already equal measures confused and frustrated, and then I hear the ending won't satisfy me? Nah, life is simply too short.

Bottom Line: This is not a bad book, this is just not one that worked for me. Hopefully more patient folks than me can appreciate this very creative world.

TL;DR

Wild Massive by Scotto Moore describes the lives of the inhabitants of a reality-warping building that may actually contain all of reality, except for the bits outside. Follow Carissa as she navigates increasingly difficult obstacles on her journey to live a peaceful, secluded life in her elevator. Thrill as a species of shapeshifting creatures fight for their freedom against the tyrannical building association. Enjoy a book that defies description. Highly recommended.

Disclaimer: The publisher provided a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Any and all opinions that follow are mine alone.

Review: Wild Massive by Scotto Moore

Some books defy easy categorization. Some books require the reader to sit back and trust the author’s storytelling. Some books take disparate elements that don’t seem to make sense and blend them together for a unique experience. Wild Massive by Scotto Moore is all three. At various moments, it could be classified as science fiction, fantasy, or horror. It’s a wild mix of idea, character, and fun. This is a book that when I try to describe it, sounds like it shouldn’t work, but it does. Wild Massive by Scotto Moore is an amusement park ride turned into a book.

Carissa lives a secluded life in an elevator riding up and down the building, avoiding the Association. Her life is interrupted when a shape-shifting wizard lands on top of her elevator car. This shapeshifters is being chased by zir people, and Carissa teleports the elevator to a different floor in the building. Her plan is to leave the shapeshifter at a different elevator so that ze can take it down to the Association’s floors. But the nearest safe floor has a different elevator located in the middle of a Wild Massive amusement park. Meanwhile, in the background, the building spanning Association is currently fighting a war with the shapeshifter’s people. Carissa hopes to dump the shapeshifter and get back to her life alone in the elevator. Instead she gets swept up in events that will rock the very foundations of the building, maybe even the foundations of reality itself.

Wild Massive by Scotto Moore features both first and third person points of view. It features magic, technology, superheroes, aliens, angels, the multiverse, a giant corporation that makes one wonder what Disney would look like if Old Walt based it on a bad acid trip, and, most important, roller coasters. Moore calls the various sections of the book Seasons and the chapters episodes. Each episode varies in length and pace; sometimes the reader is on a roller coaster ride; sometimes it’s the bumper cars; and sometimes the episode is a reality-bending equivalent of “It’s a Small World.” (This is a compliment. Some people actually like that ride.) Like any ride, it’s a book to sit back and let the author take you where he wants to go.

Let the Ride Take You

Finally after a third of the way in, I gave up on trying to figure out what the story was, what was going on, or where it was going. I decided to trust Moore, keep my hands in the ride at all times, and just enjoy myself. That’s what I recommend. At the beginning, all the threads seem so disparate and unconnected other than taking place inside the building. (Never mind the characters that exist outside the building.) Maybe I just missed things, and other readers will pick up Moore’s clues faster. But if you’re like me and you don’t, that’s okay because Moore has created a wonderful attraction for his readers. It comes together in the end masterfully.

The Tower Contains Reality Itself, I Think

The building where Wild Massive is set reminds me of the Dark Tower, created by Stephen King and the tower of Babel from the Books of Babel by Josiah Bancroft. Floors contain various worlds, realities, civilizations, species, etc. In the Dark Tower, King said that the tower floors were different levels of reality. Wild Massive isn’t organized at all. The floors of Bancroft’s Babel have differing cultures and various functions. It’s also part attraction for the people in his world. This is similar to Wild Massive’s tower; Moore’s tower shapes reality and contains it. If it can be imagined, it’s probably in the building.

Inside the building, there’s an Explorer’s Club. It’s whole raison d’être is to travel the building and explore new floors. Some floors are safe; some floors are dangerous. Some are habitable; some aren’t. There are floors with species that haven’t been contacted yet. And most mysterious of all is the top floor. It’s protected from the rest of the building by The Chasm. Mysteries fill the building.

Rereading

Wild Massive is a massive book. I know I missed clues and setups that Moore weaved into the story. It’s a book that with each rereading will make a little more sense each time. I’d like to reread this again to see if I can figure out the story earlier than I did.

Moore does a great job dishing out world-building in palatable doses. He mixes mythology with plot and with exploration of character in a balanced way. I’d like to explore how he does that. How does he misdirect on the earlier clues? What explanations did I miss that would have clarified the story?

Stories

Wild Massive is a weird story in the best way. At it’s heart, it’s about how stories affect reality, even the stories that don’t get told. Carissa’s past is a story that’s covered up, and the very absence of her story affects the reality of the building and the war taking place within it. That’s how it works, right? What we know and don’t are our reality. It’s why the internet has fractured our political culture; we might exist in different realities due to our different media sources. What those sources leave out of a story can be almost as powerful as what goes into it. The questions that our media fail to ask our politicians also shapes our reality. Wild Massive understands that.

Interestingly, the title of the book is the same as the title of a mega-corporation inside the book. Wild Massive is a media conglomerate, like Disney on steroids and ‘shrooms. It’s mascot is Helpless the Bunny, whose origins are as an addict. Wild Massive creates and runs the amusement parks but also a centuries spanning intermedia series, Storm and Desire. The corporation controls a number of media outlets that serve their purpose, including the themes and rides in their amusement parks. Moore doesn’t just indict government’s influence on media; he’s concerned with corporate influence as well. How do the storyboards in writer’s rooms affect us? As Moore is also a playwright, I bet he has a bit to say about economies of scale and the effects on storytelling. Massive corporations have much more reach and much more influence than local theaters and independent publishers. Does society value these big corporate stories more? Or are they just exposed to them due to good marketing? Are the media tie-ins at amusement parks, the internet, or wherever distracting us from more intimate tales?

Conclusion

Scotto Moore’s Wild Massive defies simple description. The closest that I can come up with is that it’s weird in all the best ways. It begins as organized chaos that evolves into a story about survival through cohabitation. It’s about storytelling. It’s about the need for a good roller coaster ride. It’s about all that and so much more. Highly recommended.

Scotto Moore has become a narrative force. He first was on my radar from his music-blogger based horror novella Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You which struck a strong chord with me as a former music blogger myself. So I was a bit taken aback with the experience of reading his prior release Battle of the Linguist Mages which was a crazy glitter-punk-MMORPG slash world-ending-interdimensional-apocalyspe story. The way he consistently twists and turns the narrative is equal parts disorienting and compelling and Wild Massive is no different.

The sections of the book are broken into ‘Seasons’ and the chapters into ‘Episodes’ (fun-fact, author Scotto Moore spent many years as a playwright prior to writing) so you’ll see the story from multiple perspectives and storylines, and things move fast.

Our crew of characters include the ‘Building’ first of all. Carissa, who is an elevator dwelling loner-telepath searching for her long lost brother. Rindasay, a shape shifing Shai-Manak sorcerer. The Association, who maintain parts of the Building and are enemies to the Shai-Manak, and a team of narrative designers for a fictional hit-tv series called Storm and Desire.

The books opens as Carissa befriends Rindasay – a defector who wants to meet with the Association. We travel through the eponymous Wild Massive amusement park and learn about the elevators and the ‘cloudlets’ that operate them. What evolves as the book progresses are threats of war and unrest amongst the people of the building.

What transpires is difficult to put in any simple terms. This story will challenge the readers to grapple with the constant flow of shifting narratives and expansive settings while also sprinkling you with rewarding dialog, action, and enjoyable characters.

It’s all quite fitting as the story feels like it’s been plucked from the grounds of some trans-dimensional mega-amusement park. You enter a mysterious never-ending building, buckle in, and while you’re content speeding through the twist and turns filled with glee when suddenly the bottom drops out from under you, you’ve gained someone else’s despairing memories, and the person sitting next to you is now an amorphous shapeshifting winged android with a bomb inside it.

Wild Massive is an outlandish inter-dimensional sci-fi fever dream and lives up to it’s title in every way and sure to be unlike anything you’ve read before.

Thank you #Netgalley and #tordotcom for the review copy.

This story is definitely both wild and massive.

I DNFd this around 20%. In such a complex world with multiple characters, organizations, and events, it was too much information up front for me. And although everything is explained, it felt like the more that was explained, the less I understood. Information overload while the story established itself.

I did love the plot and overall setup. I liked learning why Carissa lives in such an unusual place as her backstory unfolds, seeing how the Building operates with its endless possibilities on every floor, and the blend of fantasy elements into an otherwise sci-fi world.

Definitely a lot of cool concepts here, but the fast-paced worldbuilding in a world this expansive just didn't work for me personally.

I remember not really enjoying Battle of the Linguist Mages, but I didn't let that stop me from being wildly intrigued by the premise of this book. I liked the pacing of this a lot--I tend to enjoy faster paced world-building and plotting more than not. I also liked the use of different pronouns in this work. I do think the pacing itself was a bit inconsistent at times, though. Sometimes it felt like it would randomly slow way down. But, overall, I really liked this world and am looking forward to more from this author!

I didn't like Moore's "Battle of the Linguist Mages" and had some of the same problems with "Wild Massive". His world building is faster than I prefer, though I acknowledge that style gets to the plot faster, so it will come down to preference. I like the pacing of the second half of the book, and the story moves fast enough I can enjoy it even with my preferences.

I enjoyed Wild Massive by Scotto Moore.
I did find that parts of the book where slow but I still had a lot of fun reading it and it was a great sci-fi read!
I definitely recommend this book.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

Wild Massive by Scotto Moore will be released February 7, 2023. Tor/Forge provided an early galley for review.

An important element in good science fiction novels is the worldbuilding. Moore does a solid job in this particular area. The concept of the building, the movement through it and the various factions involved are all introduced in a very organic and flowing manner. That pulls the reader into the world while at the same time introducing the key characters to the story. As the story progresses, he adds to those details to fully flesh things out.

Another element that jumped out to me quickly was the pronouns incorporated into the narration. Words like "ze" and "zir" are used for objective and possessive pronouns for some of the races. It is a small thing, but it further gives the world a more distinctive flavor.

This story has a lot of elements in play - multiple versions of the same world, magic, extra-human abilities, time travel and more. With a large cast, a lot can seem to be going on at the same time. Moore does a good job keeping things in the air as the chaos builds to its final conclusions.

My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Macmillan- Tor/Forge for an advance copy of this science fiction novel about a building that stretches to infinity, the elevators that travel its floors and the wonders that lay inside.

Life is the 21st century really isn't what people expected. This modern world seems confining in many ways with a lot of ups and downs, and occasionally a bit of side-to-side motions. Through social media we see great things, and cool people and places, but a lot of it seems too controlled, and not real, and in many ways just not worth leaving our four walls. The stairway to heaven seems more like a elevator to oblivion, people making the same mistakes over and over, never trying to make things better, only somehow worse. Scotto Moore has captured this feeling in his science fiction novel the Wild Massive, the story about a woman who wants to be left alone, a shape shifter who wants to help, and elevators that travel a building with infinite floors, opening to pocket universes full of danger, wonder and four more walls.

Carissa is perfectly happy riding her elevator back and forth side to side and not dealing with humans nor the Association who control large levels of the Building, a structure that spans infinite space, with levels that open to new worlds, new civilizations, or desolate landscapes filled with nothing. The elevator has everything Carissa needs, food, first aid pills, a sentient computer and no real demands. Till one day something smashes into her roof. A shape shifter known as the Shai Manak is there, who she brings into her elevator and offers to drop off on the next floor that could be considered safe. Suddenly her elevator is under attack by other members of the Shai Manak, and Carissa and her new companion are separated from her elevator on a floor that opens not only to America but to Wild Massive, a mammoth theme park, but without her resources, weapons or elevator. And now Carissa has more enemies she has to worry about.

The book is a mix of Doctor Who, Rick & Morty and other books with a lot of big ideas, and well infinite spaces like in the Building. Enough ideas for quite a few books, which can be a problem as there is a lot of info-dumping of ideas and how things works and some of the ideas don't get the time that they deserve to grow or expand on. The set-up is good and I like the idea of the Building and the elevators. The story is one that once the reader gets into the groove it moves well and quickly, sometimes too quickly, and again info is dropped on the reader. Also there are a few narrative switches both points of view and time, which are fine, but can take a few lines to figure out who is talking and how we got here. One could see this as a show on a streaming channel, as the floors are pretty endless, as there is much to be built off of, even in later books.

Recommended for fans of big idea science fiction, with a lot of adventure and quick moving storylines. Also role players will have a lot of fun with the ideas here. A lot of cool scenarios could be based on this book, and honestly this would be game I would love to play. This is my first book by Scotto Moore and I will be on the lookout for more.

This was a very fun romp which could have used a bit of editing. At times the pace was bogged down by deep dives into history lessons which I felt weren't totally necessary, or could have been abbreviated. That said, I very much enjoyed this book, and would read subsequent titles if this becomes a series. Novel use of elevators, nice little nods to Terry Pratchett. I'll absolutely be recommending this to patrons.