Writing Style - 4/5 
 Characters - 4 
 Storyline - 3 
 Resonance - 3 
 The Not-Too-Revealing Synopsis 
 A tourist, - no - a traveler who is a trek junkie searching for the next pristine, exotic, faraway land comes across a madman offering him just that. This is a hip, edgy-toned story of the journey, the findings, and the effects. 
 The Review: 
 This read was, throughout the book - disagreeable, annoying, shallow and boring while simultaneously amusing, gratifying, intricate and surprising. Garland has a certain carelessness with sentence structure and thought processes that mirrors the nature of the main character (both annoying and amusing). The conceptualization of Utopia was hardly desirable but the considerations of human fallibility were wonderfully related (disagreeable, gratifying). The main character alone is memorable; the others, though distinctive were place holders necessary for some drama (intricate, shallow) and while I was sure that around the half-way point this was going to be a 2 out of 5 star, the character development in the last half knocked it up to a solid 4 (boring, surprising). There is much to be forgiven, even disregarded throughout the read but the final story is worth all the distractions. I recommend this book. 
 P.S. I saw the movie eight years ago or so when it came out. I don't remember much about it save the video game sequences and that I hated it. I don't it influenced me much on the read - if anything I had low expectations for the book because of the impressions I recalled from the movie.