Rabbits by Miles Terry Review

Conspiracies abound in this surreal and yet all-too-real technothriller in which a deadly underground alternate reality game might just be altering reality itself, set in the same world as the popular Rabbits podcast.
 

It's an average work day. You've been wrapped up in a task, and you check the clock when you come up for air—4:44 pm. You go to check your email, and 44 unread messages have built up. With a shock, you realize it is April 4th—4/4. And when you get in your car to drive home, your odometer reads 44,444. Coincidence? Or have you just seen the edge of a rabbit hole?
 

Rabbits is a mysterious alternate reality game so vast it uses our global reality as its canvas. Since the game first started in 1959, ten iterations have appeared and nine winners have been declared. Their identities are unknown. So is their reward, which is whispered to be NSA or CIA recruitment, vast wealth, immortality, or perhaps even the key to unlocking the secrets of the universe itself. But the deeper you get, the more deadly the game becomes. Players have died in the past—and the body count is rising.
 

And now the eleventh round is about to begin. Enter K—a Rabbits obsessive who has been trying to find a way into the game for years. That path opens when K is approached by billionaire Alan Scarpio, the alleged winner of the sixth iteration. Scarpio says that something has gone wrong with the game and that K needs to fix it before Eleven starts or the whole world will pay the price.
 

Five days later, Scarpio is declared missing. Two weeks after that, K blows the deadline and Eleven begins. And suddenly, the fate of the entire universe is at stake.

What if you stumble across odd coincidences between seemingly unrelated incidents and your brain starts working overtime in the background to try to make sense of these odd occurrences? Random connections abound, that is the concept and world of Terry Miles’s novel Rabbits. Taking place in a realistically and authentically portrayed version of Seattle, Rabbits explores a mysterious hush hush game played in real-time that involves players following strange connections and coincidences that shape and alter the world and reality around them. A self-contained story taking place within the world of a 2017 pseudo-documentary podcast of the same name, no knowledge of the podcast is required to read and understand the novel, though it certainly enhances the read. Conceptually great and full of details and references that will make any internet junkie or video-game geek jump with glee (sorry the pun was too tempting), its actual execution is a bit of a mixed bag and one that many readers may find frustrating or disappointing to read. This is one of those novels that I appreciated the ambition and ideas while finding the actual reading experience less enjoyable.

Easily the biggest highlight and strongest element of Rabbits is Terry Miles’s attention to details, coincidences and pop culture. What sets this novel apart from others however is the content and references that heavily skew towards the gaming and internet geek communities and interests. With the story originating in a classic arcade and the main characters being gamers and online sleuths, the average casual “normie” reader may only pick up on a small handful of details. But for those millennial and younger, specifically those that comb through reddit communities/creepy pasta/online conspiracies/web or programming development, it’s a field day! Classic video-game references, hidden levels, found footage, files hidden within files, that’s only the start. With appearances by Jeff Goldblum, comparisons to Lisbeth Slander, .onion domain names, there is a very clear group of readers this novel is explicitly written for.

Outside of its internet-favored collection of pop culture references, Rabbits takes places in a hyper-realistic version of Seattle. It may not mean much for those who have little knowledge of the area, but the movements of the characters around the cities locals (both well-known and niche local spots) is excellent. I went to a college near Seattle and I found the details exciting, particularly when unexpected connections or inconsistencies occur. From a closed Capitol Hill restaurant, to the famous two-stop only monorail line, to parks and record stores you would only find in Seattle’s boho scene, the level of detail greatly enhances the kind-of-realistic speculative fiction flavor that Rabbits is going for. Like the video-game/media references, at times it can be hard to separate the real vs fictional entities in the novel which is a sign for how well-researched and designed its movements are.

While purposely cagey and vague about the nature of the focal game and the general storyline of the novel, Rabbits also has fascinating ideas and ambitious mechanisms that drive the workings of its reality and world. Initially based on coincidences and connections, the story builds and incorporates concepts including the Mandela effect, deja vu, split/parallel realities, the butterfly effect, determination, etc. The implementation of these theories and other quantum physics are nothing new for the genre, but the manner in which they’re applied to each other and all trace back to inherent patterns, I found to be quite unique and compelling.

While the detail and writing are well-done, the actual reading experience left a lot to be desired for me, despite getting the references and being able to follow the unorthodox narrative. The setup of an urban game where players are mysteriously disappearing would suggest a mystery thriller while the reality-altering quantum science elements steer the story to a speculative fiction adventure. There are also elements of shadow/gray matter and gaps of memory loss that take on a psychological horror route with some graphic and disturbing found footage elements. Despite all of those possible directions, actually reading Rabbits unfortunately is quite slow, convoluted, and short on exciting moments; not to mention the actual “game” is a very loosely applied concept. I am the type of reader that can appreciate a slow-burn story as long as there’s a gradual build and compelling hook, but Rabbits doesn’t quite have either and feels like it mishandles its 400+ pages. Majority of the book involves K and friend Chloe running around Seattle and online chasing random clues and connections as they discover the game of Rabbits and its players. But in actuality, reading their story feels exactly that, random running around with sparse story developments sprinkled around. The plot of the novel is actually quite limited and Miles’ approach to the story feels a lot like “throw everything against a wall, draw connections to each separate thing, and then explain the oddities away with mysterious intrigue”. While there are definite important events that serves as turning points in the story, they feel few and far between the rest of the repetitive and mildly interesting, yet somewhat irrelevant discoveries. In my opinion this novel could’ve easily cut a hundred pages or connections and still functioned fine as-is or redirected those pages to expand its concluding action sequence.

To make matters worse, the reveal of the game of Rabbits, the “villain”, their motives, and the resolution are crammed together into the last thirty pages, full of reveals and developments that have little previous mentions or developments coming out of left field. While in theory all of the reveals make plausible sense and works with the abstract and non-committal ending / deeper meaning (other reviews that include heavier spoilers and post-read theories discuss these points far better and more detailed than I can here), its utterly baffling why so much is crammed together in an almost nonsensical presentation. Ordinarily this could be a bit more forgivable if there was a sequel novel that built off of Rabbits‘ conclusion or the developments were unveiled in an exciting conclusive manner. However Miles’s sequel The Quiet Room is a separate unrelated story (despite Emily being the focal main character) and all the concluding reveals in Rabbits are merely explained to K and the reader in an anticlimactic and bland epilogue-style conversation. I wouldn’t go as far as to say the ending is terrible or ruins the book, but it’s quite an unsatisfying letdown to say the least.

The other notable drawback for me is the characterizations and development. The main character K is intentionally written to be vague and gender-neutral (despite the audiobook narration suggesting and Terry Miles confirming K is female, making its couples canonically queer) which is a fine narrative choice, but K’s character personality never quite surpasses the different and neurotypical pattern-obsessed character trope introduced initially. Some reviews criticize the lack of clear representation and missed opportunity for visibility, though I’m neutral on it and think that K’s neutral presentation can serve as surrogate for the reader placing themselves in the story (within the context of one of the main theories surrounding its ending). The two other notable characters are K’s friend Chloe who investigates Rabbits with her in the present day and a childhood friend Emily who she last saw years ago under unusual circumstances. Despite having a large cast of main and side female characters, nearly all of them have similar characterizations of being edgy, rebellious, and techy and likewise sound similar. Their relationships with K feel like they should be important but it feels like the story doesn’t properly develop them. Additionally there is a romantic undercurrent to their interactions and moments of romance, but the chemistry is almost non-existent and things just happen out of the blue with little to justify any growth or change in their relationships. Worse, the story has a recurring trend of having K experience important reality-altering moments or important plot developments solo, followed by K repeatedly having to recap and clue in Chloe afterwards. It happens so often that it becomes obvious that Miles is pushing Chloe to be a major factor in K’s life and the story without having contributing the right narrative material to do so believably.

The cast of side characters in Rabbits is massive, yet similar to Chloe and Emily, their development or inclusion feel like missed opportunities. A large majority of these characters are introduced as part of newfound connections that K and Chloe follow, but there’s so many and they have such short appearances that it limits their contribution to the story. As advertised in the synopsis, there are a few notable character deaths but some have such brief appearances or generic dialogue that their dramatic scenes don’t have the impact that they should. There are also another handful of characters and different affiliated factions that are involved within the game of Rabbits, but they come and go vaguely with no explanation until the final thirty pages. Despite many having compelling first appearances and initial contributions to the story, their rushed and often off-hand reveals are quite a letdown (Alan Scarpio, Hazel, and Swan being the most notable examples). The villain orchestrating and bending the game of Rabbits also has an almost comical cliched reveal scene with a motive that had very little foreshadowing or set-up apart from one clunky reveal stated unceremoniously by another character.

While reading the novel, I could easily see the conceptual elements that made the source podcast so popular. Unfortunately somewhere in the adaptation of the material to novel form didn’t quite work, namely the storytelling experience and providing appropriately placed narrative hooks (the scattered and simple presentation works a lot better in its podcast audio documentary format). With a messily executed plot and lackluster character development, Rabbits biggest draw is its mysterious premise and the unexpected discoveries of small coincidences that connect together. But even that grows repetitive and the connections are likely to only appeal to readers heavily knowledgeable about dark web or geek culture. Because of its numerous drawbacks with its execution that affect the overall reading experience, Rabbits is a difficult book to recommend to others apart from niche and highly patient readers. And that’s a real letdown as I appreciated how ambitiously crafted and detailed it is. I do think it’s a unique novel that is fascinating at times and maybe worth a read, just go with very mild expectations.