(Audio)book review: We Are Legion (We Are Bob).

I have not posted a book review in almost a year, and I have not even written one for Goodreads, which I probably should do as well. I feel kind of awful for it because I do have a long list of good titles I appreciated in the meantime. So let me spend a few words on this one.

We Are Legion (We Are Bob) tickled me in the list of Audible books for a while because the name sounded so ludicrous I was expecting something almost along the lines of the Hitchikers’ Guide To The Galaxy. It was not that level of humour, but the book didn’t really disappoint either.

The book starts in the first scene in present time, with the protagonist going to a cryogenic facility… and you can tell from the cover that’s just a setup of course. I found it funny from the first scenes that the author clearly is talking of something he knows directly, so I wasn’t entirely too surprised when I found that he’s a computer programmer. I’m not sure what it is with people in my line of work deciding to write books, but the results are quite often greatly enjoyable, even if it takes a while to get into them. On this note, Tobias Klausmann of Gentoo fame wrote a two-part series¹, which I definitely recommend.

Once you get on with the main stage for the book, it starts off in the direction you expect with spaceships and planets as the covers lets you to imagine. Some of the reviews I read before buying the book found it very lightweight and no-brainer, but I don’t see myself agreeing. While taking it with a lot of spirit and humour, and a metric ton of pop-culture references², the topics that are brought up include self-determination, the concept of soul as seen by an atheist point of view, global politics as seen from lightyears away³, and the vast multitudes of “oneselves”.

Spoilers in this paragraph, yes definitely spoilers, and a bit of text so you may not read them out of line of sight. Go back to the following paragraph if you don’t want any. Indeed, it’s very hard to tell, and a question that the book spends quite a bit of time pondering over without an answer, whether the character we see in the first scene is actually the protagonist of the book. Because what we have later is a computer “replicant” of the memories and consciousness of him… and a multitudes of copies of that, each acting more or less differently from the original, leaving open the question whether the copies are losing something in the process, or whether it is the knowledge of not being the “original” that make them change. I found this maybe even more profound than the author intended.

Spoilers aside, I found the book enjoyable. It’s not an all-out bright and shiny future, but it’s also not the kind of grim and dark dystopia that appears to be a dime a dozen nowadays. The one thing that still bothers me a little bit, and that probably is because I would have fallen into the same trap, is that the vast majority of the book focuses on technical problems and solutions, though to be fair it pulls it off (in my opinion) quite healthily, rather than by hiding all the human factors away into “someone else’s problem” territory. It reminded me of an essay I had to write in middle school about the “school of the future”, and I ended up not spending a single word on people, even after the teacher pointed out I should have done so and got me to rewrite it. I’m glad there are people (who are not me) studying humanities.

I found it funny that the Wikipedia page about the book insisted on pointing out that reviewers noted the lack of female characters. That’s true, there are a handful of throwaway women throughout the book, but no major character. I don’t know if there was any way around it given the plot as it stands now though, so I wouldn’t read it too much into it, as the book itself feels a lot like a trip into one’s own essence, and I’m not sure I’d expect an author to be able to analyse this way someone else but themselves. I have not read/listened to the other books in the series (though I did add them to my list now), so maybe that changes with the change of focus, not sure.

As for the audiobook itself, which I got through Audible where it was at “special price” $1.99, I just loved the production. Ray Porter does a fantastic job, and since the book is all written in the first person (from somewhat different points of view), his voicework to make you know which point of view is speaking is extremely helpful not to get lost.

All in all, I’ve really enjoyed the book, and look forward to compare with the rest of the series. If you’re looking for something that distracts you from all the dread that is happening right now in the world, and can give you a message of “If we get together, we can do it!”, then this is a worthy book.