Reviews with content warning for Confinement - The Outside

an epic cosmic horror novel with complex gods, a strong autistic main character, and some great philosophical questions brought up in the mix. enjoyable ride!
if i read the next book it will be because i’m fascinated by the fucked up, love-hate, complicated relationship dynamic between elu and akavi.

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talonsontypewriters's review

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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fin_pilot's review against another edition

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challenging dark hopeful mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

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wardenred's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

To fight a lie, you didn’t have to use guns. Just the truth.

Wow. This was an amazing wild ride, and I'm so happy to learn there's a sequel—I need to get it ASAP, because while the story doesn't feel unfinished, there's a definite set-up for powerful things to come.

The characters here are simply brilliant. All the humans are wonderfully human. All the angels... well, let's say I loved to hate every single one of them, for different reasons. My favorite part, though, was the worldbuilding. The book is as lovecraftian as the cover promises, and all the eldritch horrors are as beautifully weird and terrifying as they should be. However, they're far from the most terrifying thing in this book. Compared to what some of the characters get up to while combating them, the eldritch horrors are downright comforting, and that's probably the most impactful part of the story for me. I'll refrain from elaborating on it, because that would mean sharing way too many spoilers. I'll just go back to talking about the setting. The entire thing with humanity creating its own gods by experimenting with AI and then making their continued existence and nearly unlimited power possible by simply agreeing with it? There's so much here that resonates deeply with my currently frequent thoughts of power structures and shared responsibility and how blurry the lines get sometimes between victims and accomplices—perhaps even victims, accomplices, and culprits. I also find it so important that in this world of gods and monsters, it's the most human choices that make the biggest difference.

The book was structured neatly, too, with epigraphs from in-universe books, journals, and documents before each chapter embedding some important details with little explanations first, and then the narrative itself picked up those threads and spun them into a wider picture. The genre-appropriate tension held up nicely throughout the whole story, although I'll admit there were a few hiccups near the middle, pacing-wise. I also suspect that some parts of the setting and plot may have gone over my head a bit because I'm very much not an expert on quantum physics. However, none of that retracted from the enjoyment I got from this novel. I guess my overall rating for it lies somewhere between 4.75 and 5 stars. I'll round it up.

Oh, and I finish with the obligatory mention of this being a totally queernorm world, which I'm always here for. I also enjoyed the representation of neurodiversity and following a queer autistic heroine whose arc isn't about being queer or autistic, although those parts of her character definitely inform a lot of her journey.

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ailsaod's review against another edition

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challenging dark hopeful mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This was a bit of a slow start because I could tell things were going to go wrong but once I got past the initial disaster that kicks off the plot I really enjoyed listening to this book. This is my first proper delve into Lovecraftian fiction and I really enjoyed it. Horror is not a genre that I read because I am a wimp, but I can certainly appreciate a creepy atmosphere and inexplicable goings on! This book is not scary but if you want to be mildly unsettled and disturbed it will do the trick!

While I initially found the AI supercomputer gods a bit goofy as a concept - especially in a book about the eldritch unknown - they were well written enough to work well as an opposing force to the outside. What initially appears to be a good vs evil conflict becomes more and more muddy with neither side of the conflict being anywhere near 'good'.

Hoffmann did a great job on the characters - I am very fond of most of them (save those that deserve to be drop kicked into orbit!) and they also feel very real. Ysira wants to fix the damage she inadvertently caused at the start of the book but is clearly still overwhelmed by the situation she is in. Also I have not read a story with an autistic protagonist before and while I cannot say anything about accuracy I think it was portrayed respectfully. Tiv (who I thought for sure was going to be fridged) is lovely and I thought the romance between her and Ysira was written really well and made me a bit emotional. Ysira's mentor (whose name I can't remember because I listened to this as an audiobook) is (a little) sympathetic but ominous though mainly that was the whole 'lies' thing. The way the outside was explained to fit into what we know of physics and biology also felt worryingly realistic (though I am not a physicist so it may be a bit janky on that front if you know more about the science).

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carbinara's review against another edition

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adventurous tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

I really enjoyed this book! My only issue was that

I wish we knew some more about why the God’s needed human souls, and possibly a little more info about the ending in terms of Jai.

However, I believe there’s a sequel which may explain that.

One thing I particularly liked was how the book was written; often sci-fi can get a little difficult to keep up with, but it wasn’t an issue in this book. I know thats a personal preference, but I appreciated it.

Another thing about how it’s written is that the protagonist, Yasira, isn’t hugely emotional except for one scene where she lands on Jai, and throughout the ending. I found this made the scenes where she was emotional so much more impactful, especially the scene where she lands on Jai, as she is the most openly emotional then. This links to her autism, and I really love how her autism is written. For example, how in the start the book mentions about different fabrics and how those effect her, and how she repeatedly refers to Tiv as a ‘good girl.’ It also helps to empathise with her being shoved into this entirely new situation/environment.

I also really enjoyed the characters of Akavi, Elu and Enga. It’s easy for the Gods to be detached and uncaring towards humans, as we see that they hardly even communicate with the angels beneath them. However, we see the angels do have contact with these people (and once were them),

so it makes them seem almost worse that they would be willing to kill an entire planet. I especially notice this with Elu, as he seems kind and has a camaraderie with Yasira, especially in the scene where they land on Jai, which is what makes it so effective when later in the book he’s described as the ‘good cop’ instead of a good person.

Seems to tip into the conversation of how good a person can be when upholding a system which is willing to, and does, harm others. Alternatively, Akavi seems to fit the role of the uncaring, apathetic ‘bad cop’ role. We see this throughout the book,

but it’s supplemented with his worries about being disposed of, as well as his mentorship of Elu and Enga. I warmed to him enough that his ‘death’ upset me, and I was glad to see he and Elu survived and stuck together. I hope the sequel explores Enga a little more, as she has reason not to be entirely faithful to Nemesis after her slightly botched journey to becoming an angel, but she’s also the only main character still in the God’s good books.

Dr Talirr is a hard character to get a grip of, which I think makes sense since it seems like

her connection to the Outside has made her slightly detached from the reality that Yasira spends most of the book within.

However, I enjoyed her backstory, and her unpredictability made her compelling.

Another thing I really loved about this book was the imagination. This book had alien spiders, a spaceship which was alive (as in flesh and blood, not AI), and the descriptions of the Outside’s effects were always absurd in the best way.

Overall, I really liked this book :)

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