The Massacre of Mankind

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Cyn's Workshop
Aug 20, 2025
4/10 stars
A Massacre of Literature | Review of ‘The Massacre of Mankind’ (War of the Worlds #2)(Review originally posted on Cyn's Workshop)

Wow. Okay, so I’m going to try to be objective here when I write this, but before I say anything else, it’s going to be difficult because I had such high aspirations about what this book was going to be. I am a long-time fan of H.G. Wells works, and War of the Worlds would probably have to be my favorite because it’s the one, to me, that has the quickest pace. It moves too fast, and I’ve probably read this novel about three times. Twice for class and the once for my own enjoyment. So I love it, which is probably why I was so disappointed in this novel.

What made H.G. Wells such a good writer was his ability to be concise in the writing of this story. He was incredible in his ability to do that. With a novel that went up to probably 200 pages, depending on the edition. Here you have a story that is about twice that length. But you know what, a good story can be told no matter the length, short or long, a good story can be captivating or it can’t. This story was not.

The biggest problem that this novel had was its inability to be concise. The earlier part of the novel pretty much recaps what happened in H.G. Wells War of the Worlds. That’s no essential. It’s understandable that the author here is trying to give it a more realistic feel, he’s trying to ingrain in the reader that the story was a memoir, and he’s using characters in the novel to overanalyze what’s going on in the novel. That’s entirely unnecessary, especially in the way he does it. It’s tedious how he moves the story into his narrative, into something he wants to create. He gives the characters so much to talk about, and it’s not something that the story needs to focus on. That’s what gave its predecessor such a clean edge. There is so much unessential detail going on in the story that it detracts from what’s going on here in the actual story. Half the time the narrator talks about the present but then goes back to the past to tell the story about what’s going on. The reader doesn’t need to know what’s going on outside the story in the narrators “present,” the point in which they are telling the story. None of that is important, and it boggles me, it boggles me to place this as a sequel because this novel just drags on and on. It’s just tedious. There was a point in my life where I would just look at the novel and groan at the thought of picking it up to read it. That’s how much I didn’t like reading this novel.

Lackluster storytelling aside, the narrative itself isn’t clear. There are times in the novel where one the narrator was completely lost. She’s just lost in all the madness of everything going on in the story to the point where I had no idea who the hell was telling the story. That went on throughout the novel where shifts in tone made me think it was someone else. It just wasn’t clear. To be perfectly honest I’m still not completely sure who the narrator was. I’m only 98% sure I have an idea (and that’s mainly due to the blurb), but no one wants to go back, think, re-read, and try to figure something out that should be clear to the reader.

I’m sorry, I just wasn’t a fan of the novel. I was so excited to read this novel, but at the end of the day, I was just horribly disappointed. (★★☆☆☆ | D)

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Paukku
May 25, 2024
6/10 stars
This was good. And had it not wandered off like a leaf drifting through a breeze, this would have been great. The first two-thirds or so is a clever, even riveting continuation of Wells' classic. After that...it drifts. And I actually became rather frustrated with it. It's an you're-almost-there-so-let's-take-a-detour that completely ruined the flow of the narrative for me. And when we finally do circle back around to the conclusion, it is less than dramatic and left me a bit unsatisfied. Too much name-dropping and a scurrying from place to place to place with a host of new characters only adds to the sense of protracted anticipation.

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