Makes more sense if you have some familiarity with Poe's "Pym". Good, fun read with some nice drama although it did get slow at times when the author spent too much time on describing a setting...just like Poe did in Pym. ( )

An interesting story filled with all sorts of surprises of which some don't make sense, LOL. The reviews say it's pretty funny, but I didn't get the humor at all. I also thought the story was borderline psychotic since much of it doesn't make any sense. Regardless if you like a book that shifts gears a few times, you'll like this. ( )

Overthought and overwrought, "Pym" scans as a fix-up of two halves with dissimilar themes, awkwardly riveted together with a forced attempt at wry social satire. It doesn't work.

The first half is smug and pretentious, with the narrator implicitly winking at the reader: "Look, I'm a black man making fun of blacks; I'm a writer making fun of writers; I'm an academic mocking academia. Aren't I _clever_ ?" The digs at deeply-held conceits would have been more satisfying were the narrator less of a schmuck and the sarcasm thinner.

The second half enters the land of truly bad, SF B-movies. Actually, were Roger Corman to emerge from retirement to produce a blaxploitation/horror film about alien honkies in the Antarctic while hampered by a shoestring budget, this would be the screen treatment.

Hard pass. ( )

I have been waiting to get to this book since it was published! Now is the time! 'Pym' is the last book in the four book project that covers almost 200 years. I first had to read the inspiration of the other three books- Edgar Allan Poe's 'Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym' and then Jules Verne's 'Antarctic Mystery'. If I hadn't already read H.P. Lovecraft's 'At the Mountains of Madness', I would have read that before reading Mat Johnson's book. But I had already read the Lovecraft and loved it years ago. Reading all four was a PROJECT but a fun project. I love that Johnson mentions all of the books featured in this interesting bookish saga within his own book, not only Edgar Allan Poe's original mess, but the other two books as well, making my reading of all four books in this journey completely worth it for me. And Johnson's is the best by far! Really updating these others, giving a freshness to that mysterious Poe ending, not to mention making it a satire. I loved every page here and all the twists and turns. Much like Edgar Allan Poe's original featured Whiteness, whether a subconscious side affect of Poe being a supporter of slavery, Mat Johnson also has interesting things here to say about Whiteness. With a Black main character that sometimes can pass for white, he is trying to use books like Poe's to find why society hasn't moved past the sickness of Whiteness. Anything I say about this book won't do it justice. It's a gem! Pick it up! It's one of those things emanating greatness that I just knew I would love before delving into it and I wasn't wrong. I would fit this on a shelf in between 'Cat's Cradle' by Kurt Vonnegut and 'Parasites Like Us' by Adam Johnson. All three books have the same spirit. ( )

dnf @ 3% just not my thing :/