What a letdown. After having read The Boxer and Horizon by this author (both amazing), Mosquito Wars is such a disappointment.
It starts good enough - great setting, action, some funny scenes too. But it soon descends into absolute pathetic edginess. Sure, humans are the worst, we are all murderers blablabla, we get it. I‘d expect such a profane mindset from a 14-year-old redditor with depression, but not from a grown-up fiction author with a great track record.
The Boxer and Horizon were so amazing, because they focused on the characters and their inner world and relationships to eachother. Mosquito Wars does that a lot less and in the latter part completely abandons it and just focuses on world-encompassing stuff on a huge scale.
Boooooring.
I read fiction for complex characters and an engaging story, not for a High Schooler‘s opinion on what should happen to the world and/or humanity.
And at the end, the author goes HARD into religion, head-first. We already saw that in The Boxer (where a character has quite literally a „holy“ glow around them; could have only been any less subtle if they wore a „I AM JESUS“ badge). For an atheist like me this is really cringey and off-putting. If at least the author had a unique take on Christianity, but nope. Just a best-of blablabla from the bible.
Not the mention the plot holes at the end of the story:
So the queen mosquito wants to judge humanity and…. erases literally anything on earth, so that only a white field is left…. okay? What did the animals and plants and buildings and other stuff ever do to you? lmao. And the very last chapter is just completely magic, not even trying to explain it scientifically, which the author did in the beginning.
I expected much, much more. It had the potential.