Last Tango in Cyberspace

Just awful!

I have made it my mission in 2021 to not be afraid to DNF a book that doesn't hold my interest, providing that I've given it a fair chance. Previously if I gave up on a book I'd still keep it on my Goodreads 'Currently Reading' list to look at me and make me feel guilty every time I logged in. As multiple lockdowns have meant I am much more up to date on my reading list, I have gone back to try and clear the ones I have left behind. In some instances I have actually found they aren't bad stories, I was just perhaps not in the right mind frame to enjoy them when I first picked them up. With Last Tango in Cyberspace I stopped last time after 25% and so this time I went back to the beginning and tried again, and I must sadly admit defeat once again at 50%.

I love a good sci-fi but I feel that world building is so important to telling the story. With Last Tango I constantly felt like I had been dropped halfway into a story that was never explained. I had to double check this was not part of a series but it is a standalone. Bearing in mind I am halfway through the book, I still have no idea of the following key principles of the story:

- What is an em-tracker? This is the main character Lion's job. It's never fully explained and he never really uses it for us to get a good idea of it. It seems to just be a superpower that makes him feel slightly sick if he touches leather or sees a dead animal.

- Why is Lion called an em-tracker of the 'Rod of Correction'? A character calls him this about 40% of the way into the book and then several references are made to it later on. Is it a training principle? An event? A society? We have no idea.

- What is the question to which Lion answers 'Yes/No'? The majority of Lion's job is answering Yes or No to big corporations and they pay him lots of money for it. At no point is the actual question that he is answering revealed.

- What is the Rilkean? A group of people with barcodes on their necks and a love of answering questions but that is all we are told about them. Are they a faction of society? A gang? A cult? Who knows!

- When is this book set? I managed to find a hint of this when a character reveals it's been 200 years since women were given the vote so I assume it's roughly 100 years in the future. There's a few very standard futuristic elements such as autonomous cars, screens woven into clothing and cars 'seeing empathy'. However, I think author Steven Kotler needs to have a better imagination as there's still references to things like 'Skype' which is pretty obsolete even now, 2 years after publication. There's also Uber, Tinder and Xbox 360s mentioned as well as references to Apocalypse Now and Dune all of which felt very jarring to the futuristic narrative.

There are however, a few things that I did understand. The plot itself and where it was going seemed quite simple, it was just such a shame that we were missing all of the world building around it. I also know every intimate detail of how Lion's hotel coffee machine works.

Lion himself is an awful main character, he takes a lot of drugs and everything seems to revolve around this. He also got an unexpected parcel at one point which was delivered to his hotel room. He came into the room, saw the parcel then went straight to sleep without opening it. We then got an agonising over-share of the famous coffee machine and his shower routine and a few calls before he even bothered to see what was in it - who does that???

Overall, as you may have gathered this book was not for me! There needs to be a lot better world building and quite frankly some better imagination employed by the author followed by a ruthless edit for this to even begin to make sense. Thank you to NetGalley and St Martin's Press for the chance to read the ARC in exchange for a *very* honest review.