Wild Massive had so many incredible ideas in it that it was difficult to keep up. I loved the concepts and the (sometimes literal) worldbuilding, and I feel like if the world had been any less extreme the book would not have held together at all. As it is, I struggled to see the plot through the cool factor. I would have preferred this story as either a short story or a series, which surprised me because I usually do prefer stand-alone novels.

Carissa lives in an elevator. She doesn't stay there for long in the book, instead spending most of her time stepping onto different floors (any size from entire planets to a single room) and taking on the massive Association alongside a Shai-Manak shapeshifter.

This is only one of at least three main plot lines that are intertwined, complete with POV and time shifts between sections. There are other devices that introduce yet more POV characters, and one particularly fun gimmick that caused me to erase a line about the style feeling "like fanfiction." I had difficulty feeling close to any of the characters because of the frequent switches, and often mixed them up due to name changes throughout the plot and frequent use of terms like "the shapeshifter" despite the presence of multiple characters fitting that description.

The pacing is breakneck and never lets up. I would have loved this if not for one specific writing quirk: important information is always given right after the reader needs it, not before. For example, there is a scene where a telepathic voice whispers a name the reader does not recognize inside the POV character's head. The character immediately realizes what's going on because the name is the fake name she gave earlier... but the reader was never told what the fake name was during that previous scene. This happened constantly and I felt too many steps behind to enjoy myself.

On the more positive side, Wild Massive really reminded me of all the books I enjoyed as a child. I was brought back to the way I felt when I read From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, Keys to the Kingdom, Animorphs, and even Artemis Fowl. I was once again excited about the possibilities of the a world much larger than I had ever dreamed, doing impossible things that had secretly been possible all along. Wild Massive lives up to its promise of being, well, wild and massive, and the awe-inspiring scale and friendly elevators were worth the read.

If you are looking for a slow and thoughtful read, this book might not be for you, but if you know what you're getting into and just want to see where the world takes you: enjoy the ride!

Unfortunately, I couldn’t bring myself to finish this book. I had to stop around 35% of the way through the e-book ARC. This book was ultimately not for me, it seems. Simply put, I got quite bored with the plot and didn’t have enough of a reason to read at my low level of engagement for the next 65%. No element of the plot, or characters provided up until that point, were interesting or intriguing enough to propel me forward. I’m usually okay with somewhat slow pacing, but in a sci-fi novel like this, I was looking to be more engaged by the point I ended up quitting at.
I’ll start out with what I liked/the positives: this has really unique concept and is wildly imaginative as a premise (what drew me to the book in the first place was the plot description). The theme park setting, when it was featured, was very exciting. The most fun I had during my journey with this book were the theme park scenes, actually. The elevators to different worlds? Another really fun world-building element that I found engaging. I also thought the dialogue was very well-written—I even found myself chuckling aloud sometimes.
Now to the things I did not particularly enjoy and what ultimately brought me to my decision to stop reading before finishing the book. I found the most issue in the characters and their (lack of) development, as well as the (at times) overly descriptive writing that ultimately hindered my ability to understand what was going on instead of enhancing it. There are quite complex sci-fi concepts used in this book, and their descriptions and explanations were a little muddled and confusing at times—to the point where multiple pages were simply taken up with long, unclear explanations. My eyes found themselves skimming and glazing over until those sections were over because I was overwhelmed by the information and had trouble picturing what it was trying to describe. Ultimately, I had a lot of trouble imagining many of the scenarios in my head, which obviously lessened my enjoyment of the plot. For examples, all of the intricacy to the “replica” concept in kind of dragged on over time and became more of a nuisance to read about, rather than being interesting or intriguing. Jumps in time (ex. from the present, back to the past, back to the present) were not as clear as they could’ve been and confused me at times. Ultimately, I found this book to be too much explanation and exposition of the sci-fi concepts and not enough plot; a lot of telling and not showing. Which, in sci-fi CAN be fine and work well, but I didn’t find that it did here. There were too many sections that were just on the verge of being exciting and propelling you through the story, and then there would be another long exposition slump. I found the overall pacing to be all over the place. In my opinion, there were too long of gaps between the sub-plot (the past) and the main plot, to the point where I would find myself forgetting what had happened previously in the present with our main character and had to go back and re-read things frequently to remember (which isn’t fun; it breaks up the reading experience in a bad way). In terms of the characters, there just wasn’t anything about their personalities that sucked me in and made me want to ultimately find out their fates.
I’m quite disappointed that I didn’t end up liking this book, as I obviously was excited enough for it from the description/premise in order to ask for an e-ARC on NetGalley. The author is clearly talented and has a lot of really great ideas for world-building, I just thought it wasn’t executed in a fun-to-read way.

I requested a digital copy in order to sample the prose on my phone (since I don't have a eReader) before requesting a physical copy for review. My review will be based on the physical ARC I read (if I qualify)