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A review by thesawyerbean
Plan for Chaos by John Wyndham
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
1.5
This was such a miss for me. John Wyndham is my favourite author, but this book was never meant to be published and it shows.
The start of the novel was at most intriguing, as a dark noir mystery - but the cat was pulled out the bag so early on that the story transformed into an entirely different beast. One in which the entire character pool are Nazis. I have a hard time actually empathising or caring about anything past this point because they are all seemingly unbothered by being in a literal Nazi society - backed up by the fact that the pacing was just so off: slow, needlessly philosophical and overall a slog. The action at the end of the book was slightly more exciting, but fell flat with an anticlimax and a confused plot line. There was also weird misogynistic undertones which I have not come to expect from John Wyndham’s other work.
The most interesting and frightening part of the premise, the ‘cloning’ to produce a new Aryan race, was very poorly implemented and explained so that it seemed to have no real purpose to the plot.
A real disappointment, but expected from a posthumously published work.
The start of the novel was at most intriguing, as a dark noir mystery - but the cat was pulled out the bag so early on that the story transformed into an entirely different beast. One in which the entire character pool are Nazis. I have a hard time actually empathising or caring about anything past this point because they are all seemingly unbothered by being in a literal Nazi society - backed up by the fact that the pacing was just so off: slow, needlessly philosophical and overall a slog. The action at the end of the book was slightly more exciting, but fell flat with an anticlimax and a confused plot line. There was also weird misogynistic undertones which I have not come to expect from John Wyndham’s other work.
The most interesting and frightening part of the premise, the ‘cloning’ to produce a new Aryan race, was very poorly implemented and explained so that it seemed to have no real purpose to the plot.
A real disappointment, but expected from a posthumously published work.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Kidnapping, Death, Antisemitism, Gun violence, Misogyny, and Racism