Read Time: 3 Minutes
A cross-country road trip and man hunt fuelled by Reddit conspiracy lunatics lead to ever-increasing insanity in “I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom” by Jason Pargin.
Generally speaking, this was a fun and entertaining adventure of two people transporting a mysterious box across America.
Abbott is a twenty-six-year-old vlogger and with various mental troubles and a horrible family life. While driving for Lyft, he meets Ether who pays him a ridiculously large sum of cash to transport a large case across America, no questions asked.
His followers on Twitch think something is wrong as this is so out of character for Abbott, that they enlist Reddit to work out what’s going on. The fact the case had a radiation warning sticker on it set off alarm bells, and before long the Reddit sleuths and conspiracy nuts were on the case.
Are they making their way across the country to detonate a dirty bomb and kill off the Supreme Court? Is there a Roswell Alien in the box mind controlling them? Every wild theory you can think of- Reddit has thought of it.
Ether and Abbott are blissfully unaware of this though as they’ve gone dark – no phones or other tracking devices so can’t set the record straight.
I’m torn on the whole story. Overall, it was an interesting road-trip novel with a good deal of suspense humour, on the other… Abbott is a massive incel. While not obvious at the start, there’s a lot of time devoted to what feels like an incel apologist rant.
That mostly turned me off Abbott as a character. He was already borderline insufferable to start with, being woe-is-me at every turn and a doormat to everyone.
Ether meanwhile is both interesting and insufferable as well. She bullies Abbott into taking the road trip and is a kind of anti-technology hippie who is sure her view of the world is the correct one. She has a strict set of rules she reiterates many times, yet we often have her breaking them – not letting the box out of her sight being the main one.
I guess what this book boils down to in many places is like an internet argument in audiobook form. Like if the author could make a strong enough argument supporting his beliefs it would cause a sudden epiphany, and everyone would change their opinion.
Parts of it were humorous though. Watching as Reddit essentially imploded on itself as the conspiracy took hold felt just like what would happen in real life (Boston Bomber, anyone?) and the general absurdity of the situations they found themselves in.
The narration by Ari Fliakos was excellent. An easy to listen to voice, good pacing, and no production issues that I noticed. I’m going to look up what else he has narrated to see if there’s something I’d enjoy.
Will I listen to this again? Maybe, but not for a while. I’m not sure I want to check out what else the author has written. I know his “John Dies at the End” series was big, but this sort of turned off any interest I had in looking at it. So, while this audiobook had its entertaining moments, Abbott’s character and the rather heavy-handed rants leave me hesitant to explore more of Pargin’s work.