I read “Overstory,” a few weeks ago because Chat suggested it as a comp for my novel. I immediately became depressed, but finished it and then started “Playground,” which didn’t cheer me up whatsover because all I could think was Why do I even try? As a writer, it is humbling to read something done so well that you yourself want to do. Powers did with the Ocean in “Playground” that he did with Trees in “Overstory,” giving each a mystical, all-knowing presence that has been there since the begining and will be there until the end.

It was further humbling that I had no longer finished the first paragraphs of what I thought my next novel would be when I turned to the first page of “Playground.” Yes. It was an actual book, and I read about the begining of time. My first paragraphs summarized the Big Bang. Richard had beat me to it. Not only beat me to it, but rubbed my face in his eloquence in a most cruel fashion. It did little for my affection for him. At the end of “Playground,” he placed Proverbs 8:22-31. The same passage I ended my first self-published book with, the difference of course being few people read mine.

So, maybe Chat wasn’t too far off base suggesting his work as a comp, now that I consider more carefully those two coincidences, Mr. Powers beating me on the first, my preceeding him, with no particular significance in the second. Of course, I felt similarly with other books of excellence, but is clear that many others are not so afflicted by their own mediocrity that they sit around feeling sorry for their light not shining as so brightly as others such that they might sit on a completed, fully edited manuscript that took four years from then to now and cost some thousands of dollars, like I’m doing now.

“Playground” was easy to read. Fast. Engrossing. Skipping words and occaisional sentences because you knew what they were saying before they even hit the cortex, then slowing so as to not miss the emotion. Faster. Slower. Finding a rythm so that the whole thing seemed more like a song. I got the message about the beauty and mystery of the ocean and how inticrately tied to life they are, like trees. And I got the scary power of AI and not knowing for sure where it would lead, but then discovering towards the end it was a story, for real. When you’re in a story it is real, then…Well. I don’t want to spoil it.