Kill the Next One by Federico Axat

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I wanted so badly to give this book 5 stars. I think if I stopped reading ¾ of the way through, I could have. Sure there would be massive amounts of unanswered questions and ultimately no closure, but I might venture to say that would have been more satisfying – at least for me! – than what I actually got. This trippy storyline had so much potential of going completely down the rabbit hole (in the best way), but to my disappointment, it choose not to. Don’t get me wrong, I thought this book was fantastic and I found myself needing to recommend it to friends before I was even finished. And I still hold strong on that recommendation; this novel is definitely worth reading, but I wish the ending lived up to the expectations that were set early on.

Let me back up a bit and explain myself. The majority of this book is great – you definitely get sucked into Ted’s tormented mind immediately and don’t want to leave anytime soon. When Ted found the note in his pocket scribbled in his own handwriting, I knew I was in love. When part 2 began and I realized things were about to go down a disorienting Groundhog Day like path, I was begging for more. I am a huge fan of dreamlike psychological WTF is actually going on here? plots, and it seemed like that’s where I was heading. And I wasn’t wrong. The bizarre scenes and alternate realties Ted floats in and out of are mind bending. There were points when I stopped reading for a minute to collect my thoughts and internalize whatever strange occurrence had just transpired (and smile mischievously to no one because I get way too excited when I stumble upon peculiar storylines like this), and there’s nothing better than that, IMO. I enjoy a book that makes you think and is not meant to be fully figured out (within reason, of course). Hell, that gives me reason to seek out online discussion groups and blogs long after I’ve finished the last page!

Give me strange, inconsistent and all over the place plotlines all day long – as long as the inconsistent nature stays consistent. Am I making sense here? This is what I struggled with. It felt as though the last part of this book became a different one than I had started reading. It became very black and white, too logically and easily explained. For me, it lost the mysterious luster that originally had me hooked. I understand that this book probably needed some basis in reality and a rational explanation for events, but it felt inauthentic to the rest of the story. Maybe it’s just me… but I liked the illogical, open for interpretation narrative from parts 1 and 2 better than the clinical explanations that were offered to the reader by the end.

This could be due to the fact that despite the author explaining away the madness of previous chapters, there were still aspects that didn't feel buttoned up. For example, are we supposed to gather that Ted actively choose to live in denial of his father’s actions until the Blaine murder case brought it to the forefront of his mind? If we're deciding now to give sound reasoning for things, I wish Ted's sudden "snap" was articulated better. And while on that topic, what was the point of the brain tumor, given how everything played out? And the possum? I understand it was a plot device used to move Ted’s delusions along..but I don't know, it seemed to deserve more.

As previously stated, I am perfectly fine with an author leaving things up to the reader to decipher, but here it feels like a case of the author wanting his cake and eating it, too. He gave us a beautifully crafted surreal, confusing, paranoid head scratcher of a novel, but then decided at the last minute to offer a cut and dry, neatly explained ending. In my eyes, narratives work better when the author picks a side and sticks with it. This novel surely had the potential to take the reader all the way to crazy town - and I would have been more than happy to take that ride had the author fully saw it through.



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