Point B

Point B by Drew Magary
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Drew Magary does it again. There hasn't been a novel of his that I've read that I haven't fallen over dead after having finished reading.

No, no, this isn't the Post-Mortal, and I didn't over-exert myself on a Hike. Indeed, the idea of traveling at all has become absurdly easy... just like reading this novel.

Cell-phones in ten years now allow us to teleport. Like Jaunting, ya? But these are tied to nasty cell phone plans with nastier reams of unread legal-sleaze. But who cares, right, so long as we can take a trip to Spain, Brazil, Newfoundland (just kidding), and back to school in New Jersey during your lunch break.

This SOUNDS like a pretty good YA, no? And it is. But it has some really dark points that are quite as dark as Post-Mortal (and with as huge a range of ramifications, evil, and annihilation) and *almost* as weird as the Hike. But let's just swap the weird with an epic tale of revenge and you'll have a better idea about what this novel is about.

It just goes to show, dehumanization and power and racism is STILL going to be a massively huge problem when anyone can go wherever they want. After all, if there are no restrictions, and just about anyone can hop into your room as you sleep, it may not be a *NICE* future. Take along your war, your hate, and your insanity, and suddenly no place is safe.

So how do we get to Point B? Dial it up! It's very worth the Jaunt, and lordy.... that last 1/3 of the novel was absolutely un-putdownable. Brilliant. I lost sleep over it.

Drew Magary first grabbed my attention with The Hike, which was very imaginative and full of surprises and I am very glad that I got to experience Point B, which is also full of imagination, surprises and more. The story is very compelling and the cast of characters he created fit perfectly into this world. Although not listed as a YA novel, Point B often times felt like it was aimed at a YA audience. I don't think this is bad in any way as I enjoy reading YA novels, this is just an assessment since some readers might find this problematic.

The prologue sets the tone for this book and begins to introduce us to the mystery of the story, who killed Sarah Huff. From there the story follows Sarah's sister, Ana Huff, as she is coping with losing her sister and adjusting to having to start a new boarding school. Anna is a very likable character but early on her actions feel a but obsessive/stalkerish towards her roommate at the start of school. That would be my only criticism. This is set as a teleportation love story but I felt a bit obsessive to me. Overall I felt the characters in this story had plenty of depth and diversity.

I loved this world Magary builds in which people can port from one place to another with the use of a PortPhone. This sounds amazing and even illustrates the benefits economically and environmentally to the world. But like everything, there are two sides to the coin, so we also learn of negative impacts like society abandoning road maintenance to porting not being available to all classes of people. The constraints of porting in and out of the school also sets up the story well. Anna and her new friends take on the challenge of building their own PortPhone to be able to leave the school and make money by selling this benefit to other students. This is short lived as the story's dramatic twists and turns take off and drag you with it.

Rebecca Soler does an incredible job narrating this audiobook. I found her tone of voice, pacing and emphasis to be spot on. She was the perfect person to narrate this book and she fully embraced all of the characters in this story. I look forward to hearing more from her in the future.

Point B by Drew Magary is imaginative and brilliant in all the right places. I had high expectations for this book based on how much I enjoyed The Hike and this book exceeded all my expectations. I highly recommend this book!

I would like to thank Drew Magary, Rebecca Soler, Podium Audio and NetGalley for providing an ARC of this audiobook in exchange for my honest review.

A wildly fun and imaginative romp. Magary has snatched a bunch of various ideas from other stories and melded them into this perfect book. The author manages to imagine the future with this completely novel technology, while acknowledging that cool technology does not fix people. And people be broken.

Magary's previous 2 novels have hit the sweet spot of believability and absurdism that many great works achieve. The narration of this audiobook is also pitch perfect. A delight through and through.

Overall, this was an enjoyable book. Some of the Characters fast dialog and one liners really kept the story moving and gave good character depth to what could have been a very cut and paste story.

As with other scifi style titles, there are plot holes and contradicting events, but these were spaced out and didn't detract terribly from the overall storyline.

Most main and direct supporting characters were given depth and a reason to root for them. Villains, on the otherhand, were very one dimensional, colored with an almost caricature type of drop-in mad-scientist vibe. This took me off the story a bit at times.

In a nutshell, a good escapism piece of scifi that would pair well with YA Fantasy/Adventure sensibilities.

I enjoyed this story as it was an original idea. It was engaging and the characters were realistic and relatable.

The book was written well and got you sucked into the characters. It wasn’t quite my cup of tea but I loved the interesting scenario around the book itself. Would love to find out what happens to the characters next.

FYI. When you mentioned Barton(?) crocheting and then described it it sounded like knitting rather than crocheting. Knitting how two needles creating loops. Crochet is a single “needle” with a hook at the end.