Book Review
Title: A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor (The Carls Book 2) by Hank Green
Genre: Young Adult, Sci-Fi
Rating: 5 Stars
After finishing An Absolutely Remarkable Endeavour I couldn’t wait to get into the sequel especially after the ending of the first book. The opening to A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor was amazing and really captured the essence of the first book. April begins by telling us the reader that she isn’t going to lie to us anymore and tells us that we aren’t as safe as she first thought. However, we begin changing perspectives here between Maya, Andy, and Miranda although I am sure there will be more as the story progresses. Maya firmly believes that April isn’t dead and is using the Som and the weird things happening in certain parts of the US to begin looking for her. These strange things range from dolphin pods finding their way to Trenton and dying rather than returning downstream and strange internet outages that aren’t really happening anywhere else as well as suspicious lab and hospital break-ins. Andy has been sent a sentient book which seems to both be able to communicate with him and tell him the future, I am sure this book was sent by April and the Carl as it confirms that April is still alive and being treated for what happened to her body and mind but it warns Andy not to mention the existence of the book and he doesn’t. Meanwhile, Miranda has been trying to return to her PhD but is distracted by Peter Petrawicki’s new “service” and she believes that she knows what it is. The book informs Andy that he needs to buy stock in a company then sell it four days later and when Miranda calls him he needs to tell her “to do it”, whatever that is.
As we approach the ¼ mark in the novel, I was already engrossed in the new mystery and I couldn’t wait to see how it developed. We continue to follow April’s friends as they seemingly head down different paths that are connected to the mystery surrounding April and the disappearance of the Carls. Andy is using the book to trade stocks which is technically illegal as it is insider information but the book tells him he is going to need the money he is making very soon. This isn’t a small amount of money with it is well over 100 million dollars. However, during this time he develops a relationship with a girl named Rebecca “Bex” and develops his friendship with Robin who he hadn’t really seen as a person before but realises he is grieving for April just as hard as he, Maya and Miranda are. Maya meanwhile gets her hands on these strange rocks that are just as strange the material the Carls were made out of just not in the same way. She has also become a target for reality game players as she is cornered twice at the market where she bought the rocks and both of these players want to buy the rocks from her and I have a feeling these players are connected to Peter’s new company, Altus. Miranda has also applied for a job at Altus as she believes they are trying to create a neural interface which is what she has been trying to do on a smaller scale and her university advisor encourages her to take the position along with Andy. They tell Miranda she needs to take the job because she can pass information on what Peter is doing but she can also prevent him for doing dangerous things as people with her experience are rare and he will need her more than she needs him, she just doesn’t know this yet. Her advisor also tells her that they can slow down the rate of progression Peter is aiming for as nothing good has come from progressing so much in a short space of time and we see this in what is happening around the characters in the “normal” world.
As we cross the ¼ mark in the novel, Miranda is still waiting to hear from Altus when she settles back into her routine but they do get hold of her and flew her out for another interview. Here she really has a chance to shine and prove her worth but Peter interrupts her interview with personal questions as he knows of her connection to April May and he also seems to have a little bit of a crush on Miranda or he is just really guilty and he even tries to talk to Miranda privately but she believes her chance for working for Altus is now gone. However, she has manage to learn that Altus didn’t build a human-machine connection but rather they found the connection Carl implanted in them all for them to be able to experience the dream and they are working on replication or harnessing that power. Maya, however, is trying to figure out the mysterious of the game, Fish while hiding from any potential players that are looking for her but here she uncovers her own copy of the book of good times, the same book Andy has but she has apparently found it early and it instructs her to return to the same spot in three weeks’ time. During this time, we switch back to Andy who popularity has been dropping due to channels with more radical views like The Thread ands he ends up contacting them. The Thread is a group of people working together to change the world and they want Andy to join them but it is going to cost him financially and he has to be completely anonymous and not try and uncover anyone’s identities as The Thread involves some of the most powerful people in the world right now and it seems like he ultimately joins. By the time we return to Maya three weeks later it seems that she meets April again but we don’t know for sure as we switch to April’s perspective for the first time since the opening of the novel. We learn that Carl took April from the warehouse and has basically rebuilt her but with rock like materials that Carl is familiar with so April has become a basically human/alien technology cyborg of sorts and know when and if she can return to her “normal” life it is never going to be the same again but we can see she still has her connection to Carl who can apparently either take the shape of an animal or possess an animal which is just strange.
As we approach the halfway mark in the novel, we hear, from April and Carl, itself. Through them we learn that Carl may have come from somewhere else but it isn’t aware of where it came from or who create it. Carl only became conscious when it arrived on Earth and in parts. On Earth, Carl when through several different awakenings where it became aware of its purpose. This purpose allows Carl to grow its knowledge and processing power by hijacking the process power of other beings, namely cells and now larger organisms like animals and in some way humans. Carl explains to us how it grew and how it went about achieving its purpose in protecting the collection of ideas and the linking of consciousness that the human race has. However, Carl makes us aware that humanity isn’t unique and he is aware of other beings like himself on other planets and their varying levels of success. Carl explains to April the damage done to her in the warehouse was severe and it didn’t have the necessary experience or materials to repair her to her former standard and basically had to guess especially when it came to her mind. Here April realises that something isn’t right with her as her emotions aren’t functioning like they were before and that she can basically access any information she wants although this causes her pain and the more information she asks for the more painful it is. By the time Carl finishes explaining this part, April feels violated and doesn’t feel human anymore and flees from Carl where she literally runs in Maya and they flee together with the help of Derek. However, they don’t get far before Fish players start tracking them down leading to Maya getting shot but April manages to save her and Carl fends off the attacker before April kills him. We also see that Miranda and Andy get to experience AltaSpace, which is Altus’ answer to bringing back the Dream from Carl but some people have bad reactions to it. However, Andy doesn’t and he learns that people can create and sell things in AltaSpace to earn Alta Coins and the fifty people with the most Alta Coins gain access to the Premium Space which might also be the destination from the Fish game meaning the people hunting down April and Maya might be linking indirectly back to Altus which means Miranda holds the most dangerous position right now. Andy has also become the 12th member of The Thread and along with Five, they both enter AltaSpace for the first time.
As we cross into the second half of the novel, we move fairly quickly in the second half of the novel as we see Maya and April on the run from the Fish players and they are eventually reunited with Carl who leads them further away from the other entity. Through Carl we learn that it failed in its mission to protect humanity when April “died” and it was supposed to have been deactivated by a stronger entity that Carl refers to as its brother. However, as he saves April, Carl wasn’t deactivated but the other entity is trying to fulfil its purpose of turning humanity into cattle and Carl is trying to prevent that. Carl leads Maya and April to an apartment where he has also lead Robin and Andy through the book of good times and explains the only way to save humanity is by raising the odds of its survival to more than 50% as this would shut down the other entity but this is also the entity that is possibly controlling both the Fish game and Altus. Once the group are reunited and they take stock of the resources they have, they realise that they have the means and connections to shut Altus down since they have Andy as an insider with The Thread and about to gain access to the Premium version of AltaSpace along with Miranda on the inside. However, when we return to Miranda’s perspective, it seems that she has been found out as a spy within Altus as they have managed to find her phone. Before this Peter gives her a tour of the server banks where she learns that people are the servers which is why there is no one else on the island as they are being used to power Altus. It seems like Miranda is Peter’s prisoner now until the others destroy Altus or she finds a way out. Once again the stakes have been raised as Miranda’s life might be in danger but the others are unaware of this as Miranda only managed to get a few texts out before she was discovered but we also have to worry about Andy as he was being sucked in the design Altus had created but he also knows they have to destroy it the same as Miranda.
As we approach the ¾ mark in the novel, they group form a plan but it quickly begins going bad. We see Miranda figure out that she isn’t a prisoner in Altus but a prisoner within her own mind, but she is planning to screw up Altus from the inside if she can until the other can come and find her but they aren’t aware of her situation right now. When Maya asks Carl to check on Miranda, his brother is waiting for him and he injures Carl quite badly which means he has to cut off his access to Altus meaning they are now blind to what Altus is doing. Carl informs the girls that they have 19 days to turn the public opinion on Altus as when that 19 days is over, they themselves will be heading to Val Verde. The first thing the girls do is film a video announcing to the world that April is back which has mixed reactions, most are happy that she wasn’t killed in the warehouse but more people than ever see her as a traitor as she admits that Carl had to repair her and she isn’t the same April that went into the warehouse. These kinds of opinions are the very same one that caused the chain reaction in the first book that directly lead to April almost being killed. Meanwhile, Andy is trying to secure access to the Premium Space but a lot of celebrities are buying their way in and his place is dropping. However, One tells Andy he will help if he can and he does but he unintentionally reveals himself to be none other than Justin Bieber which is weird in itself. When he gain access to the Space he messes things up with Bex as she was spending the night and he chose to enter the Space instead. Miranda worries as she tries to figure out how to escape that she isn’t the only person Altus is keeping prisoner as she thinks of those people being used as servers. However, I am worried that everything isn’t going to be wrapped up smoothly in these last 100 or so pages unless there is another book. Andy eventually learns of Miranda’s imprisonment through the AltaSpace and realises how much he has become like April from the first book but now the time has come to act as they will be in Val Verde the very next day but they still don’t really know how they are going to stop Altus.
As we cross into the final section of the novel, we finally get to witness April and Carl’s ultimate plan come together in a way I literally couldn’t have predicted and it does provide some social commentary on the way we use social media and the ways in which social media uses us. A Beautifully Foolish Endeavour definitely lived up to and exceeded the first book in my opinion and while I would like to read more from April and the gang, I was really satisfied with the way this duology ended and I hope to read a lot more from Hank Green in the future. The reviews I had seen about this duology before reading it were polarized but I definitely fall hard in the love it camp and if you are looking for a unique twist on the first contact with aliens trope then I highly recommend this duology especially the audiobooks.
Buy it here:
Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Also see: An Absolutely Remarkable Endeavor
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