/lit/ - Literature

>>22415705
Kundo Wakes Up, #2 - Saad Z. Hossain (2022)

One year, 237 days ago Kundo's wife left him a note that simply read, "I'm leaving" and she hadn't been seen since. The famous painter who no longer paints tried all he could to find her, even hiring a hacker, but he then fell into a fugue state and many months slipped by unnoticed, and he became oblivious to the outside world. Eventually, one day Kundo Wakes Up and he decides to try living, and finding her, again. However, he's constantly assailed by intrusive thoughts about her, such as what if she's ran off her with online gaming guild members and she's cuckolding him daily by having constant orgies with them. Many other scenarios present themselves to him unbidden. The first step is to get back in contact with the hacker and see what he's found out. That's how the mystery of his wife's disappearance begins. In pursuit of her he'll enlist a motley band of misfits and travel to the figurative, or perhaps literal, end of the universe and beyond.

The blurb on the cover from Samit Basu provides an excellent summation: "Cyberpunk, high fantasy, climate catastrophe, and and its heart, a compelling story about broken people finding each other and a way to become whole again." Although this novella takes place in the same setting as the first, they're very different in almost any meaningful way. This one is an investigative mystery of a guy trying to find his wife as Chittagong, the city around him, is being lost to the waves, specifically the Bay of Bengal. Karma has declared the city a loss and is slowly withdrawing. Those who mostly remain are Zeros and the haplessly eccentric. Kundo's investigation is rather haphazard in that he hopes that in his stumbling about he'll find enough clues to point him in the right direction. Due to this lack of focus it often reads more like his daily life and the interactions he has with those he meets. That was kind of nice, but it lacked a certain something to make it definitively enjoyable. One of the main plot devices is a full immersion, literally and figuratively, VR gaming rig.

I didn't enjoy this as much as the first novella, though it has its own charm. It's barely a 4. It takes place sometime after the first, but it's never made clear when that is. One character makes a return appearance, mostly for the purpose of commentary. The new cast is good, but lacks the vibrancy and zest of the former. The main problem for me is probably comparing it to the first, which may not be fair. The former was about over-the-top personalities and their outrageous antics. This is about a group of miserable has-beens who struggle to get through each day, yet still find some way to carry on for now, though not forever. I appreciate that it's a completely different perspective on the setting, though it's also a bit jarring because of that as well. The ending is poignant, that's for sure.

Rating: 4/5