@Zaboem
Question #1: I can’t tell which genre/s it’s a satire for, at least not from the first two chapters. But! To be fair, if I would’ve been able to I’d have been pretty disappointed; the novel does a great job establishing itself and it’s just obviously not time to go into the meat of things yet
Question #2: I used the mobile app, so no music for me.
Question #3: I think an audiobook / podcast is the best way to go, at least at first. It can really grow your readership (I know I’m always looking for new indie material to listen to while I’m at work, and I’d be delighted to have this to listen to), where any sort of game would require a different, more niche, section within the fanbase and might draw attention away from the actual content for some people. So, in my opinion; both! Just focus on the audiobook/podcast first.
General:
I’ll be honest, I came to this story left-foot-first. I’m not a fan of satire, I’m not a fan of fantasy/sci-fi, and the first line put me off completely with the ‘hysterical’ line.
The story seems to have a comedic-narration style kind of like Hitchhiker’s where a large part of the comedy relies on the narrator being absurd in the way [he] talks to us, which honestly I thought was very well done, if a bit premature, in my opinion. For me, I needed a stronger sense of what’s going on, before I could find any of it funny.
The line “All was right in the universe, and Candide was the center of that universe.” is fantastic.
Could I gush about it for hours? Absolutely.
It summarizes everything we need to know about the world, the character (Candide), the interaction between our two main forces in the story so far (‘the universe’ vs ‘mc’) and it does it in such a casually humoristic way it bought my loyalty and affection in an instant.
At the beggining of chapter 2, I think you have a typo, you wrote: “The silence never set right with it’s owner” rather than, I’m guessing, “sat” ?
The writing style during the whole story so far has been so elegant, so the ‘buuut’ at the beggining of chapter 2 really pulled me out of it, actually.
“I reset it when something goes right. I’ve been waiting a thousand cycles for something to go right.” is again, a line I’m absolutely in love with. It’s really, really funny & makes me genuinely curious to know what’s about to happen, and how it relates to Candide
“He even felt exposed whenever he had pondered that he was nude underneath his own clothing.“ is also a fantastic line.
Anyway, my favorite lines aside, this was a great novel to read, from what I have read. It has a really strong Douglas Adams vibe, I realize I said Hitchhiker’s before but I’m actually leaning towards Dirk Gently’s now, but let’s be honest, which exact Douglas Adams book gives me the same vibe as this is so completely irrelevant it’s a topic better suited to discuss never.
The writing is elegant, eloquent, & very much fun and amusing.
I had a bit of trouble placing myself in the scene at first (I swear, I was sure they were on a boat for the longest time, for no reason whatsoever), but after awhile things cleared up. The pacing is a tad slow but I’m assuming it’s got more to do with needing to introduce everything at first and only then being able to use it which is fair.
The writing itself felt professional. Even if I didn’t read deep enough to really get to know the characters, there was a consistent feeling they’re very well developed, 3d characters, which is really rare to see pulled off so well this early in the story and was fantastic (for example in the ‘nude’ line I mentioned earlier).
Overall, it was a really great read, and I’m definitely going to go back to it when ai have more times
