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Softland cover art

Softland

By: Matthew Fish
Narrated by: Lauren Moore
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Summary

On his way to attend a funeral for a friend hundreds of miles from home, a young man is stricken with a crippling panic attack that causes the ground beneath him to swallow him whole. Scared and confused, he finds himself in a dark fantastical world where his fears and anxieties manifest into the creatures and people that inhabit the land known as the Abyss. As he begins a journey to navigate his way back to his own world, he begins to understand that maybe the worst thing in life, is to remain afraid of the things he cannot control.
©2011 Matthew Fish (P)2021 Matthew Fish
Fantasy Adventure
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Not great

I'm not sure how I stumbled across this book but it wasn't a happy accident. The book has a very unstructured plot set in a world that is never really explained very well. I believe that was meant to be confusing to mirror the main character's confusion but it just felt like a jumbled mess.

The world is one heavy on concepts and ideas, a bit like The Wizard of Oz on LSD. They are assisted by a Prince of Cats, a librarian and two law enforcers of some sort. Initially they are on the run for a crime they didn't commit but everyone realises they were innocent somehow.

The two main characters fall in love for no discernable reason. The passage of time is screwy and I don't really know why we are supposed to care. It's a bit like the old Dungeons and Dragons TV show except the main character isn't trapped in a fair ground ride.

The writing has description issues as well as pacing problems. It meanders until the final third when the characters have a definitive goal and everything starts to pick up a bit and form a proper narrative. The dialogue isn't spectacular either and the character interactions were often bizarre.

The narration was unusually poor both from the narrator who speaks in a dull monotone (I believe her voice must have been slowed down) and the production who left in multiple repeated sentences throughout.

Overall, I would not recommend this book. Fish has talent, as demostrated by the competent final third of this book, but the Alice-In-Wonderland-on-crack style world was not his forte.

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