Worm (Parahumans, #1) (2024)

Nettle

180 reviews54 followers

August 10, 2016

This book was 1.7 million words long, it took me 13 days to read, during which time I pretty much didn't put my laptop down. For those of you unsure, that is long, that's almost 1/2 of The Wheel of Time series, or all of ASOIAF, including Dance with Dragons.

In just under 2 weeks, that should tell you just how into this I got. In fact, when (not if, when) he gets a decent editor and publishes this as a set, I will buy it, and I will most likely read it again. Not sure if that's going to be any time soon though, as he's now working on a second book, Pact! The fact I can't just pick it up and read the next chapter now is absolutely destroying me.

I read this almost directly after Steelheart, and the two did not compare at all. This is the book Steelheart should have been.

Spoilers from here on out, I warned you. If you have not finished it do not read on, I swear to God, even if you don't think you will read it, just don't.

Ok.

Promise me you've finished it.

Done?

Good, let's talk.

Yeah the first few chapters were rough, but when you consider that this was his first book, it's absolutely amazing. Once it gets moving the action never really lets up, and at times it felt a lot like a game, always rising in power and intensity, with the main characters fighting just to keep on a level with everything around them.

That said, it wasn't always in a good way, it felt most apparent in the way the Nine were the ultimate bosses at one point, but then they came back later as barely more than trash-mobs. Granted they're neutered versions of the originals, but still.

One thing I did like was that despite all of the people vying for attention around her, Taylor managed to stay the main character throughout. In so many books the main character is merely a catalyst for the events around them, and she was, but she was never overshadowed or outdone by others, in the end it was still truly her story.

And man was there was a huge list of characters, after a while I stopped trying to track them, if someone big was mentioned then I Googled it and looked them up on the wiki. I liked that though, the many characters, it made the world feel solid, and the way they were handled through interludes meant that their histories and viewpoints could come through without of intruding on Taylor's. Characters like Assault and Battery, they were minor characters at best but their backstory was pretty sweet and meant they weren't just names by the time he killed them off.

I never entirely understood the bits with the space-beings, but I think that may be intentional, they were alien after all. I mean, I got the broad picture, I think, but, yeah. On the same note, the extra endbringers seemed a bit, um, unnecessary and not as memorable as the first ones. The backstory with Trickster and his lot was pretty awesome though. At times I wanted to just skip them and carry on with the action though.

Overall, I'll add more to this later, but I think it was one of the better things I read in 2013, and I'm looking forward to what he comes out with for Pact!

    favorites

Nicole

823 reviews2,387 followers

Shelved as 'on-hold'

January 12, 2021

Update 12/1/2021: 22-42% S9 ARC (11-15).
This is my favorite arc so far and although I have finished it and started the next one, the part I’m reading now is underwhelming by comparison. My initial plan was to finish this book this month. But I’m not as invested once the s9 arc ended… so I’m going to take another break for now, or at least not focus on this book anymore.

Since spoilers are long overdue, I can’t write my thoughts about this part without spoilers. But first I want to say how much Taylor’s character has developed and what a smart person she actually is. She can control bugs... Uhm okay, but how can this make her stand out... well by finding creative ways to use her powers and strategizing. Also helps that she’s a good improviser. Well, she’s a natural.
Spoilers can be read even if one didn’t read interlude 11. They don’t spoil the S9 plot.

I loved learning more about different characters, many interests me especially Weld, Legend, Alexandria, and the Cauldron leaving that message to Baterry??? Simply amazing how he’s planning everything considering this is a web serial. Not a book he can edit and work on. I have heard that some plotlines don’t go anywhere and so far, almost halfway through this book, I haven’t come upon such a thing. Sure there are “bonus” stories that don’t exactly advance the plot, but they add more background to the city and the characters so I don’t mind that at all.

The Slaughterhouse eight members' backstories (at least the parts we know) were very interesting and the group reminded me of the Phantom Troupe from hunter x hunter (but waaaaaay more savage and bloodthirsty). I didn’t hate them, although they were the real villains this time. They fascinated me. The fights with them didn’t bore me at all (and yes the length of the fighting scenes didn’t change). I was fixated on every word. And with what happened at the end, I’m more curious than ever about the role they’re going to play later on.

I know people take pride in loving anti-heroes and morally gray characters (AND THIS BOOK IS FULL OF THEM), I’m a hero kind of girl through and through. But Lisa, Brian, Rachel, and even Alec, grew on me considerably in this arc. We get a closer look at who they truly are. I’m also very interested in Noelle’s abilities now… honestly, the travelers seem like a nice bunch of people -even if villains. I like Genesis and Sundancer.

It’s difficult to talk about this without spoiling anything but the hunt, fights, and battles in this arc were simply fantastically executed. I couldn’t stop reading. It was the first time that I felt a real compulsion to read this web serial. I was living the story which the characters (and this is something I very much care about). I truly now understand why Worm is so popular.

04/01/2021 update: I wrote this mini-review at 23% then read more before posting it (until 29%) so I have to separate opinions:

Interlude 11a-h and Plague (arc 12) 5 STARS (22-29%)
WOW!! This is getting very good and I can finally understand now why it's popular. The introduction of S9 raised the stakes immensely and now everything is more interesting. I also loved the anniversary bonus interludes. I'm starting to appreciate more and more chapters told from povs other than hers. Not that I don't love but I want some new voices. I also didn't mind the fights here, I'm not sure if there were shorter or if I was too invested in the book to care.

I sadly read a major spoiler. Basically, I know now the ending which really sucks and this usually makes me lose interest a bit in the books I'm reading. I still have a long way to go and this book here obviously about the journey and not just the end. Still, now I won't be shocked which is shame.

From 10-22% ~around 4.5 arcs (ending with 11.8 Infestation)

I finished the first 5 arcs disappointed by Taylor’s decision and while I’m still not ok with it, I can see now that it was necessary to move the plot forward. Also, we got the best explanation for Emma’s behavior that we’re ever going to get I guess… I won't say I'm satisfied but it's better than nothing.

This will be vague because I want my updates to remain spoiler-free (except for the hidden spoilers).

This web serial is definitely growing on me. At one point, I didn’t read for weeks but I’m glad I’m reading again and things picked up. Arc 6-7 weren’t favorites, not necessarily bad but not great either. Fun enough. A great battle takes place in arc 8 and I enjoyed it a lot! It was nice to see all the action. If this serial was made into a series of books, I believe the first book would end here. It would be suitable.

Yet again, Taylor ended that arc too with a decision I don’t like but I know it’s necessary to what the author has in mind. I would’ve been more interested in but I guess the author is into “unconventional methods”.

Arc 9 was one of my favorites so far. I expected I will find it boring but I was very interested in reading the story from the Wards’ perspectives. So far only the interludes had points of view (third person while Taylor’s part is told from first) so I appreciated that they had their own arc. Another favorite was the Shadow Stalker part, I found it well done. Well, I believe anyone reading Worm would like that part.

Now, at 22%, I know what’s my biggest problem with Worm is: the action scenes. They’re so damn detailed that I’m bored. Arc 8 excluded, I found myself struggling with any “battle” (not a skirmish => on a bigger scale). This is my first web serial and I think waiting for one issue after the other makes it ok for the battle scenes to be so long. But all at once? They become boring/uninteresting anymore. I will probably skim through them sadly because I noticed that every time I stopped reading for more than a few days, it was during a battle (surprisingly).

But overall, I’m enjoying this part much better than the first 10% especially since now I’m invested in more characters like Weld, Flechette, Dragon, and others. The stakes now after arc 8 are much higher.

First 10%; rating: 3.5 stars

It didn’t feel like reading 600-700 pages. It’s obvious that this is just the beginning and maybe that’s why time passed fast while reading the first 5 arcs. One might assume that this web serial will have a slow start but nope. It immediately sucks you in and keeps you wanting to read more.

Taylor finds herself with the Undersiders, one of the villains, hoping to infiltrate them and get the heroes' info about their boss. Little she knows that they're also very normal and might see them as friends. Or want to genuinely befriend them. Of course, we've met lots of capes so far and I can't keep track of everyone's abilities. And this is only the start.

It’s very enjoyable so far and I like the characters. I can already see why it’s popular.

My main issue, however, is with the last arc (#5) I read. I was disappointed with Taylor’s decision and while I know that her position wasn’t to be envied, I don’t have to like it.
Something I won’t turn a blind eye to is Emma’s bullying. Some bullying can be simply dismissed, never needing to be explained because kids are mean. But not this extreme type from Taylor’s best friend. Why Emma suddenly started bullying Taylor? Why did she hate her? Why is she acting like this out of nowhere? This isn’t the kind of bullying that has no explanation. So far, it doesn’t seem like we’re getting one. Taylor also made several important choices based on it.

These are the only complaints that sadly made me want to take a short break. I’m taking my time reading it anyway.

-----

I'm finally reading this web serial, it's been on my radar for a while now, and truthfully, I never read unpublished work not on Wattpad, not web serials, nothing. I think I'm taking "go big or go home" a little bit to the extreme?

Nonetheless, I'm excited (AND SCARED) to be starting this giant almost 7000 pages book that I know will be the biggest book I'll ever read (if I made it to the end).

It's divided into 30 parts so I'll be reviewing a few as I go along (I will hide spoilers, of course) and then a general review at the end (if I ever get there before I died).

Since I have no stable job, unsure if I'm going to enroll in uni (yeah for some reason my old university didn't start yet -not sure what they're waiting for), I figured no better time than the present.

    2020 fantasy

Richard

46 reviews3 followers

January 18, 2015

Finally. I can finally sleep. That’s the trouble when you’re reading a book this engrossing that insists on ending almost every chapter with a cliffhanger.

I originally wrote a quite short review, but at 1.7 million words I think Worm deserves a bit more effort on my behalf. Review contains spoilers for the first 4 chapters of the 300 or so chapter story.

Worm follows the story of Taylor, a teenage girl who has recently lost her mother and is suddenly finding herself bullied in school.

Stick with me here.

Taylor knows that she could easily torment the bullies back because she is one of the minority who have developed super powers over the last few decades. Taylor’s power is to control bugs, not the most heroic or effective of abilities right? Despite this all she keeps a small notepad meticulously planning the day when she can become a true hero like her idol, the great Alexandria. Founding member of the Protectorate, able to stand up to the fearsome Endbringers and all around beacon of hope. Action figure available from all good retailers.

After a particuarly bad day at school she realises that she has been planning her debut for far too long. Armed with a bottle of pepper spray, a costume painstakingly woven out of spider silk and a handful of cockroaches she sets out to patrol Brockton Bay’s Docks area and face its nests of murderous, super villain led gangs.

Needless to say this doesn’t go well. After being taken in by some friendly faces who mistake her for another villain she starts to realise that maybe the heroes aren’t so heroic, not all villains are evil and perhaps everyone has their own motives.

The action escalates continually but smartly. I’ve read books where the main character just gets things piled on and piled on until their enemies are practically fighting themselves. Worm simply raises the scale and stakes after each battle. Every victory has a downside, every loss has a silver lining. Several times throughout I found myself wondering how Taylor and the Undersiders had the slightest chance of prevailing. The powers are amongst the most imaginative I’ve seen and the point is made that a cunning and practiced person can do more with a weak power than a person coasting along on what they've been given. With a power like bug manipulation you wouldn’t expect Taylor to be a particularly effective superpowered “cape” and yet this is definitely her story rather than the story of her watching other capes duke it out.

Extra background is given throughout with interlude chapters which are narrated from a different character’s perception. They can be about an event we’ve just read about from a different angle, something Taylor didn’t get to see or even the origin stories and early days of other capes finding their powers.

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone with enough time, you're not going to be able stop reading half way through. I would however also warn readers to think if they really want to see the eventual aftermath. It's hard to improve on the ending and the final interlude feels to me like an idea that happened half way through the story and had to be crammed in somewhere.

Oh, and the name Taylor picks? I keep groaning at that pun.

    fantasy favorites

Kevin

216 reviews3 followers

June 21, 2014

So tough to rate. The inventiveness and insight are top drawer, 5 star level. The ability to track hundreds of characters and plot threads was super-human.

It was inspirational too. The protagonist just kept transcending her own limits, again and again, to a galactic level, plausibly, just by thinking outside and above the box. I LIKE that. That's exactly the kind of thing I want to read.

It is my first web serial, and I very much enjoyed seeing the process, as readers enthusiastically commented and suggested and even proof-read the project.

But.

As you would expect with a serial, there were false starts, and story lines that "didn't take". The author imposed super-human demands on his/her own productivity. And met them! But at the cost of typos, using wrong words, bad grammar, continuity errors, etc. Rated as a novel, he's got to lose points.

And it was just unforgivably long. Somebody said it was the equivalent of 21 novels. It went well past the point where I even cared about keeping track of the side characters. I didn't even necessarily take the time to understand the main plot line. It was just too, damned, long.

Goran Lowie

Author11 books41 followers

April 30, 2017

What a crazy, crazy adventure. This is one of the most "epic" books I've ever read-- and I mean epic in the literal sense of the word, not the buzzword it's become. I want Worm 2 right now. This book had a kind of scale I haven't really seen in any other kind of book. There were certain chapters... certain arcs where I went "Oh, shit, this is one of the most intense things I've ever read". It's such an intense story. Full of emotional parts. It's on par with A Song of Ice and Fire, with the Stormlight Archive, etc--

I'm not really sure I can put into words how amazing Worm was for me. Worm is a kind of grand epic that you either drop after a few chapters or it becomes a part of your daily life. When it ended, it felt like I lost something very important.

I'm not a big fan of superhero stories. No, wait, let me rephrase that-- I absolutely hate superhero stories. Especially superhero movies. They feel so generic to me, the good guy always wins, the superpowers aren't really that creative at all. The only superhero movies I've liked are the Batman movies by Nolan. Apart from that, if anything even remotely contains superheroes I'm instantly turned off.

Worm is all about superheroes. But unlike other superhero stories, it feels extremely creative. A good example is the main character: The basic idea of her power is that she can control bugs. That's it. At the start, I thought her superpower was sort of crap. But by the end, without her power really changing at all (except for her mastering it) she was legitimately powerful and terrifying. After Worm, I just groan even more when I see other Superhero comics and movies with their boring use of powers.

Worm completely avoids everything I hate about superhero literature. The actual function of powers is explored (kind of a Sanderson-esque 'hard-magic' system that has actual rules and works consistently). The powers are properly explained, there's an internal logic, intelligent usage.

I wouldn't say it's... consistently good. There are some parts which felt off to me, including a timeskip which I thought was very poorly done, but it's still far more consistent than most books I've read. Worm is the same length as A Song of Ice and Fire but that entire time is packed with action and character development and a Brandon Sanderson-like inability to put the book down.

It might be too soon for me to say this since I'm still reeling after having finished it only about an hour ago, but I think I can safely call Worm one of my favorite 'books' of all time, mainly because it just feels so real. One of WIldbow's greatest strengths is that you can really get into the head of each of the characters. The Interludes were some of my favorite parts of the entire story.

Malazan has its good and bad parts, ASOIAF has its... 'dull' streaks, Wheel of Time has the famous issues with pacing, particularly around books 7-10, I could go on-- My point being, Worm somehow manages to draw you in the entire time.

God, this was such an amazing experience. Such an amazing journey.

    favorites favorites-2017

Phillip Murrell

Author9 books66 followers

September 30, 2018

Worm has a lot of fans. The author is clearly good at writing dialogue and telling a long story. However, I don’t think his STORY is very good. Reviews suggest I am in the minority with this opinion, but I suspect the people who don’t like the story aren’t willing to grind through 1.6 million words and then leave a review. I used my Christmas Break to do this, despite not enjoying the story, and liking it less as it continues. I will not blame the length as an issue, web serials are meant to be long. If you like Golden Age Comics (where the good guy not only wins, he must win), but you just wish there was more swearing, then Worm is for you. I will now break down the many issues I had with the story of a young heroine named Mary Sue … I mean Taylor Hebert. Here are some spoiler-free issues with Worm:

•Skitter doesn’t train long enough to be as tough as she is.
•Skitter shouldn’t be able to recover from punches from full-grown and superpowered men.
•Skitter is never scared, despite being new to this world
•Skitter never experiences anything close to PTSD (no characters really do) despite the loss she faces
•Skitter never freezes in combat. She always uses her Batman level intellect to think up the perfect plan on the spot.
•Despite her power being bug control, no other heroes/villains (especially tinkers) ever bring super bug spray or bug zappers with them.
•The heroes are all incompetent or corrupt with very few exceptions
•The police are nonexistent
•Despite the Undersiders all being teenagers, adults of every age listen to their every word. Nobody really doubts the kids know what they’re talking about.
•Skitter seems like a good person, but she is a narcissist that only cares about doing what she thinks is right, mostly for the accolades. I realize this last point is up for debate, but it’s how she came across to me.

Spoilers will follow after this point.

Most of the story of Worm takes place over a 90-day period. This is important to point out because Taylor, aka Skitter, is a meek teenager who is constantly bullied. She gains the power to control insects. Not super-powered insects, nor does she get insect strength or reflexes. She just has the ability to summon insects. This is a unique power and fun to play with, however, on her very first night as a “hero” she fights (and mostly beats) a seasoned supervillain with high power levels. There is some interference from four supervillains, the Undersiders, and they were sent by a man who can see different possible futures, but it still doesn’t explain how she can outthink and outfight this guy. Not to mention the fact that getting punched isn’t easy. Taylor is continuously described as skinny (in early chapters). She simply would not be able to fight at this level. Since this was the first encounter, I allowed some suspension of disbelief. The writing was interesting and I continued on. My limit to suspend belief was quickly reached.

Not to beat down every stupid victory Skitter or the Undersiders have, I decided to summarize. Remember this is over a 90-day period without any previous training except to gain some endurance.

•Skitter wins in the Lung fight.
•Skitter and the other Undersiders fight the Worm Universe equivalent of the X-Men. They beat them after robbing a bank. (Clockblocker has a very cool power. The author does a good job of thinking up new stuff).
•There are overpowered beings called Endbringers. Skitter teams up with most heroes and villains in a truce to battle Leviathon. She not only is instrumental in victory, but she uses a halberd to stab the Godzilla-like monster in the butt.
. Skitter becomes a crime lord with her own portion the city to run. A fifteen-year-old kid is looked up to by other villains and average citizens. She helps them, but it's just too far fetched.
•A group of villains called The Slaughterhouse 9 attack the city. Many times they are referred to be so strong that an individual member of the team can take on dozens of capes (superpowered people) and will likely win. That is unless Skitter is there. She is able to fight off one. She not only survives, but she decapitates the character (this is a survivable wound). She does this single handedly.
•She executes the big bad in order to rescue a little girl. Skitter cares more about this girl than she does her own father. Her father continuously suffers, but Taylor doesn’t give a crap. She also executes this man with a shot to the head despite not wanting to stand up to the bullies that torment her in school.
•The leader of a group of capes gets Endbringer-level powers. Skitter is once again able to lead the resistance and survive. Remember all she can do is summon bugs (sometimes dipped in capsaicin).
•Skitter is arrested and goes to super prison. She kills two more people and gets help to escape. This was especially bad because she kills essentially the Superpower FBI director and the Worm Universe version of Wonder Woman. That’s right. With less than 3 months of experience Skitter takes on a Wonder Woman level hero with two decades of experience. That’s like saying Squirrel Girl can beat Ms. Marvel. It will never happen. In fact, Wonder Girl with 3 months of experience could take a twenty-year veteran Skitter.
•Skitter and the rest of the Undersiders fight another Endbringer in India. This time there is actually a casualty more substantial than a red shirt. However, the first Undersider death is the one that has the least impact on Skitter. Her plot armor and that of her companions is thicker than any Batman has ever worn, and Batman has nearly indestructible plot armor.
At the end of all that, we finally get past the three-month point. If you care about a story treating itself realistically, then you can see that this is not for you. I wanted to like it. It had great reviews and was well written, but great prose will never substitute for a poor story.

    read-in-2017

Vasil Kolev

1,092 reviews198 followers

January 4, 2016

If it wasn't so good, I'd have probably kicked the person that recommended it to me.

I don't know how this was possible, and how hard was it to write, but this is a million word book that doesn't slow down. There's almost no rest, it's hard to put down, and you can't just do what is usually done with most such books - to just skip one night of sleep and finish it - because it's huge, and interesting, and still huge, and you want finish this chapter, then the next, and the next, and it's morning again...

In itself, the story is interesting, and even doesn't require too much suspension of disbelief, even though a lot of it goes against most of the physics we know. It definitely deserves a reading, even though it's huge (it's close to half the Malazan book of the dead).

    must-read

Lis

291 reviews61 followers

December 11, 2017

Christ.

An endeavor like that merits a proper review. I'll do it once finals are over with.

I would highly suggest all of you read this series. It'll take a good amount of productivity away from you because it's 1,500,000+ words long, but it's definitely worth it.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Alright. What to say.

Worm is an adult novel told in installments on the Worm webserial page. It's the story of young adult Taylor Hebert's coming-of-age, set in a seemingly post-apocalyptic world hurtling towards a second doom, is wrapped up in a superhero story that takes the standard cliches, exsanguinates them, uses the blood to water its crops, and then spits on their graves, which is then wrapped up in a staggeringly vast cast of complex characters with their own shimmering mosaic of motivations, storylines, and personalities.

In Taylor's world, there are "parahumans" (as the website might suggest) who live alongside regular humans. They appear with varying frequency, and the powers seem to be genetic. There's a group of "good guys" and other "villains," though 1) the lines between the two are totally inconsequential because of what Worm does to make you question morality everywhere, and 2) 80% of the parahumans are villains.

Anyway. Worm is 1mil+ words divvied up into various arcs which are then further divvied up into various chapters.

I think one of the most masterful aspects of Wildbow's writing is that pacing. In 1,500,000 words, there is not a single dry moment. In both the interludes and the regular storyline. Seriously. There's a really nice crescendo effect as things slowly worsen for everyone, more antagonists are introduced on both sides, etc, and there are nice lapses of tension without there being a sort of "monster-of-the-week" dynamic that Taylor faces.

Oh, and Taylor is not one of the "good guys".

The characters were written really well, and there's a really diverse cast that Wildbow works with. It's like watching a chessboard from high up, except there are 5 different colors of chesspieces and they start at various intervals along the board. Bloodbath. Each of the chesspieces has their own backstory and unique quirks that make them really fun to read about, and with the scale of the writing, there's a lot of room that Wildbow has to carve everyone out.

READ THIS. DO YOURSELVES A FAVOR.

    2013 2014-reread 2015-reread

Mark

253 reviews6 followers

December 17, 2015

This entire thing feels like the mindless scribblings of some sheltered teenager who feels the entire world is out to get them after they went home and thought "man, if I had super powers, this is totally how it would go!" And then would feel completely justified because they're clearly the smartest and nicest person in the world and everybody else is the crazy one.

It's not relatable. I don't understand anybody's motivations. Characters are either one-dimensional, inconsistent, or both. The main character isn't introverted - she's just a bitter, cynical, shitty person with no reason for being that way. Just like every other character. There aren't any themes or subtext. Action scenes aren't particularly engaging or thoughtful. Dialogue is completely unrealistic. The pacing is horrible. Chapters take too long to get anywhere but are simultaneously broken up into way too small pieces. It feels like every single chapter was written off the top of the author's head. Not as in it was stream-of-consciousness style. But more like he made up everything as it goes without planning ahead or looking back. And there are soooo many commas. Why are there so many commas? There doesn't need to be a sentence between every phrase.

Maybe I expected too much from this? I don't know. You'd be better off reading a superhero comic. Any superhero comic.

    not-going-to-finish

Hussain Elius

127 reviews109 followers

December 30, 2013

You know how when your watching a great action adventure movie, you kinda want to get up during or right after the fight scenes and do some karate moves?

That's Worm, but for books.

At about 1.75 million words (about 22 conventional books) it's a long, long read but there isn't a single dry moment. The first two or so arcs are just "okay" with our wannabe hero Taylor Herbert finding herself amongst the company of villains instead but the story steamrolls through a fantastically rich world of blurred divisions between heroes who aren't heroic, villains who aren't villainous, gods who are ungodly and creatures beyond comprehension.

The cast is diverse and intelligent. They try to build on any advantage they can find, even the smallest one, and extrapolate. Of course doesn't help that the antagonists do the same and the conflicts keep escalating in every which way. Soon it stops being a battle between good and evil and becomes between sanity and insanity. Most of the parahumans are under 30 with a bulk being teenagers - it's not because of target audience, but it's just accepted as a constant that people WILL die before they get that old. But alas, there are things worse than death. Much, much worse.

As someone else put it, it's a world where anything is possible but not in a nice way.

With that being said, I loved it. I love gray areas and Worm is just full of it, with "politics, factions, rivalries, information warfare, and the individual problems of the people beneath the costumes" (TVTropes). Sometimes you are reading towards the end of an arc and you think 'finally we get a break!' but then within a paragraph or two everything is changed and you are sucked in again at the deeper, darker, world of Worm.

I believe the author wants to edit and consolidate Worm and publish it. It's something to look out for - this series will make an excellent animated series.

    2013-books dystopia sci-fi

Erin

33 reviews9 followers

May 31, 2015

Worm (Parahumans, #1) (10)

I read Worm in just over a week, and during that period, it took over my life. You know how most books have lulls, parts where it's a bit easier to put down? Worm doesn't have that, so I sat in the break room at work reading it on my phone like a literary crack addict.

I'm honestly blown away by the quality of this work. What's even more mind blowing is that this is basically a first draft - from what I gather, the author posted as he went and is planning on releasing an edited version at some point. The sheer scope of this story is seriously amazing and what's more amazing is how everything ties together.

Worm is set in a world where certain individuals - parahumans - are capable of getting superpowers. Wildbow put a lot of thought into how superheroes could realistically work, and the end result is some truly incredibly worldbuilding. The Worm world is dark, gritty, but real - Wildbow never makes things edgy for the sake of being edgy, and while the story is cynical, it isn't entirely bleak.

The story follows Taylor, a teenage girl who recently developed powers. Taylor's character arc is absolutely amazing, her growth is fantastic, and I love that she's an intelligent, out-the-box thinker who uses her limited powers to the absolute best and most versatile of her ability. As someone who generally dislikes reading from first person POV, I loved that the story was written from Taylor's perspective. She's a great narrator, and I think seeing things from her perspective adds to the story.

The characters other than Taylor are all well-developed and pretty much everyone with a name is a distinguishable individual with some measure of depth. It says something that in a story this long, I rarely need to check the character page (and if I did, it was mostly to confirm powers) - the same can't be said of George R.R. Martin. What's more, most of those characters are relatable, sympathetic individuals. There weren't really any cackling, evil-for-the-sake-of-being-evil-villains , which is a feat in itself in a story about superheroes.

The plot itself is captivating and engaging. The story is split into 30 Arcs and an Epilogue and is something like 1.6 million words. There's a lot going on, but as the story builds, the stakes get higher and higher and things finally get to an incredibly grand conclusion. The pacing is remarkably quick throughout and there's never a lull in the action - there's always a new twist, revelation, fight, or something.

There are a few aspects of the story that could use an edit. I felt some of the action scenes went on too long and there are places here and there that could be condensed/trimmed. Also, That being said, these are pretty minor things in the scope of the story and didn't at all detract from my enjoyment of the story.

Overall it would be wrong to give this anything other than a strong 5 stars due to the sheer amount of enjoyment I got out of it.["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>

Snoopy Dogg

2 reviews

September 5, 2017

Note: there will be spoilers ahead. Most will be minor, but certain twists led to me lowering my score, and will be discussed.

I wanted to like it, I did. The setting is pretty much made for me, and I really liked the idea of the Endbringers, unstoppable forces of nature that really set the tone of the series I feel. Certain characters stole the show whenever they appeared, and

Starting off I was 100% on board with Reddit's "This is the best book ever written" hype. Certain chapters genuinely struck chords with me, most notably Hive when Taylor confronts the teachers about the bullies. The fights were good, the powers creative, and the story interesting. This culminates in the Leviathan arc, my favorite arc of the story. All seemed well.

But, and this is a rather large but, over time whatever goodwill I had for the protagonists vanished, until by the Echidna arc I was rooting against them. In fact even before that I was hoping Coil would succeed in some way, and when you're supporting a kidnapping, torturing, gives-drugs-to-little-kids-to-basically-enslave-them sociopath over his opponents you know something's not right.

So what happened? I find it hard to pinpoint exactly, but I've noted some factors which, while they may not be exhaustive, help to explain why Worm lost its allure.

First, there's the characters, most notably Tattletale and Taylor herself. I loathed Tattletale. Her interactions with Panacea in the bank and then again later on in the Slaughterhouse Nine arc display how callous she really is, and the story glosses over this. When discussing Victoria's fate, the impact of the Undersiders on her mental state, which directly led to the above, is almost never mentioned. Tattletale is the corruptor to Taylor, which is fine, but the story never addresses it. TO make matters worse, for a considerable amout of time the audience only has her word for it that certain events happened the way they did. Surely someone who's MO is manipulation would never lie?!

Tattletale's near-omniscience was also a massive deal-breaker for me. The only time her powers mislead people and any consequences actually arise from it is in the bank. Which is her first time working with Taylor. That's it. She then proceeds to whip up oh-so-convenient solutions to the Slaughterhouse Nine, Coil, and Echidna arcs. Those arcs are consecutive, by the way, so finding out that she has magically resolved yet another crisis was utterly maddening.

Then there's Taylor herself. While not as bad as Tattletale, her constant self-aggrandising gets real old real fast. Taking the moral high ground when the S9 are rampaging around is one thing. Doing the same against Cauldron is outright hypocritical, but nothing surprising. Blackmailing the heroes because of the "greater good"? Yeah, that's too far.

Her underdog status, and that of the Undersiders as a whole, also stops being an actual thing quite quickly. When you're defeating members of the S9 one-on-one, twice, and when the entire group survives multiple crises unscathed while other teams (who are conveniently opposed to the Undersiders) are ravaged by them, you are not the underdogs. When you are the de facto rulers of a city, you are not the underdogs. Would be nice if the story stopped pretending they were.

Most of my remaining quibbles are to do with the plot, and I'll try to be quick about it, so here goes.

The reveal of the Endbringer's origins and motives was extremely aggravating. I always think the twist of "X was holding back the whole time" is a sign that the author has written himself into a corner by making character X too powerful. (Especially when the book was sold to you by saying that this wouldn't happen.)

The bullies are cartoonishly over the top, to the point where they're too much so to make Taylor sympathetic by comparison.

The deus ex machina that saves the team in the S9 arc was infuriating and touches one of my pet hates in fiction.

The treatment of Shadow Stalker is irritating both for Taylor's moralizing and Tattletale's nonsensical abilities.

Ultimately I can't really recommend this. It's just kinda meh. And when that meh is spread over 1.6 million words, it becomes grating and you wish you were reading something else. So I did.

This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.

Ronan

1 review1 follower

February 11, 2015

Where do I begin.

This is my all-time favourite novel (if you can call it a novel). The characters are so well-constructed that my brain finds the concept of them not being real people weirder than the notion of them becoming real. Worm is what all other superhero fictions should aspire to be, and other genres could learn a lot, too. It's rife with moral ambiguity and difficult decisions. The characters are very three dimensional, and the protagonist, a young girl named Taylor, is one of my all-time favourite characters. She uses a mediocre superpower with an anything-but-mediocre level of cleverness to, as the popular tag-line says, 'do the wrong things for the right reasons.' She's active and internally-driven, which makes for a very exciting story. Occasionally, chapters will be from other PoVs, and by-and-large these are great too.

Other strengths:
*Countless strong, fleshed-out female characters.
*Other social issues are also handled well. The proportion of gay, asexual, bisexual, etc characters also matches that of the real world. This also goes for race and mental disability (less so for physical disability, but this is explained in-canon). He manages to strike the right balance between 'no big deal at all' and 'character is defined by overcoming adversary', similar to how one dwarf said that George R R Martin wrote Tyrion Lannister.
*Nobody is invincible, except those with invincibility powers. During one of the arcs, a battle occurs, and the author supposedly rolled dice to determine who survived.
*The fight scenes are great.
*The powers he comes up with are unique and creative. The way characters use their own powers even more so. You'll never be able to watch The Incredibles again without facepalming at how little Frozone exploited his power, for example.
*It's dark, but not too dark.
*The explanation for where powers come from is the most plausible one I've ever encountered.
*If the author had a power, it would be 'avoiding plot holes'. Wildbow is excellent at not writing himself into corners, and in writing himself out of corners. Anything that seems like a plothole at first, like those 'Why didn't they just?..' questions, gets addressed. There is always a reason they 'Didn't just' do something.
*Amazing world building. This skill is also seen in Wildbow's second web serial, Pact.
*I am not a very emotional man, but this story has some bits that really moved me.

Weaknesses:
*There's a time skip 2/3 of the way through. This is confirmed to be something that gets fleshed out when Worm gets edited, but until then it's a bit frustrating.
*It can be a bit slow to start. Some people only start loving it around arc 8.
*At times you can see the 'support beams' of story structure. Occasionally antagonists emerge and you know they'll be around a while because it's obvious that a lot of plot is being set up.
*Not for the weak-stomached. Some seriously fucked-up things happen in this. Worse than Game of Thrones level fucked up.

Jonathan

47 reviews1 follower

April 30, 2014

I'd like to think that someday in the future, Worm will be considered a classic of fiction.

Unfortunately it's not in printed form, and admittedly a few chapters aren't polished (but I mean, the guy was doing a NaNoWriMo every month for like 2 years?). So I fear many won't consider it a "real, proper book". But it's the best fiction I've ever read. Dark, intelligent and serious on a grand scale. It's not something you read on the Internet and forget. Not a story with some theme that you can't relate to, but were told by someone that it's a classic and hence should affect you. No, the scale of Worm, upon which Wildbow tells the story, is so vast -- in quality, in quantity -- that any reader would be able to relate to it emotionally and intellectually. It is a story that touches upon all corners of our collective existence.

You know that feeling you get after watching a really good, serious movie that's also rather long? The feeling when it fades to black and the credits roll? For Worm, that catharsis lasts days. And just thinking about it instantly gives me that "high".

Good luck to you, Wildbow. I really hope you get the proper praise you deserve one day.

But then again, good writing needs no luck.

Joel

45 reviews

July 2, 2015

The good: This is a superhero story in which the main character has kind of a mediocre superpower that she uses to great effect through sheer cleverness. I love stories where underdogs think their way out of difficult situations and this story is chock full of that stuff.

The bad: If you are looking for beautiful descriptions, ruminations on the art of writing, or deep symbolism, this is not the story for you. Go read some Gene Wolfe or Borges or something.

The in-between: This is a first draft. While it is surprisingly good for a first draft, there is a ton of stuff that would be cut or trimmed if this were to be turned into a novel or set of novels. This is a story for those who don't mind digressions and explorations of minor characters and drawn-out descriptions of exactly how every problem is resolved. Although the style is thoroughly modern, this long, digressive structure resembles the serialized novels of the Victorians more than modern genre fiction.

Jenna Kathleen

105 reviews153 followers

January 27, 2019

DNF at around page 600.

I know it has a huge following and I can understand why, but it's just too long. Up until when I stopped (end of Tangle), I was enjoying it and liked the concept, but it's just way too long to spend time on for something I don't absolutely love.

    audiobook buddy-reads canadian-authors

Seth

28 reviews

August 15, 2020

It's strange to start a positive review with a list of caveats but I think context goes a long way towards both an appreciation of the accomplishment that Worm is and a healthy idea of whether or not this story is for you.

Worm was a superhero web serial published on a tight schedule. Donation chapters and interludes excepting, there were two chapters every week for roughly two years straight. The amount of herculean effort and commitment that takes is something to be admired.

With that in mind, it's worth noting for people who can't overcome it, this is wonderful storytelling but not articulate literature. Worm is essentially a massive first draft, a monster of a story written by a growing Wildbow. Some chapters are polished and well paced while others suffer from the stressors of the author's day to day life: This is not a story for those who cannot handle the odd typo, flat dialogue or confusing prose. Sometimes what is intended by a paragraph is confusing to grasp and off putting.

For everything wrong with Worm's technical polish there is so much done right. This is a story that sells organizational corruption and moral ambiguity as well as it drives home stark, hopeless Lovecraftian horror and frightening conspiracies orchestrating events from the shadows.
It is a jaded representation of super hero culture. An articulation of what it means to be a hero or villain in a world where the morality and validity of our actions are unclear.

Worm's story is told primarily through the lens of Taylor Hebert. Taylor has recently lost her mother and is severely bullied in school, the trauma of which causes her super powers to manifest. Taylor's powers are simple: She can control every bug within a couple thousand feet of her and she has an enhanced ability to multi-task. These two seemingly weak powers work together in tandem with Taylor's decisive personality and creativity, driving them to their absolute limits. It's the sort of thing I love: A simple idea or ability with countless creative applications, if only the user knows how to manifest them.

Taylor just wants to do the right thing but seems to constantly find herself at odds with the wrong people. Early events in the story see her mistaken for a villain and the injustice of that simple fact has immense repercussions for the rest of the story.

Unlike the usual super powered universe that may favor simplistic descriptions of powers, most abilities in the Worm universe have some extra layer of complexity or hidden nuance. Most powers manifest through a traumatic event (Something that might seem familiar to Mistborn fans) causing many of those with powers to suffer from psychosis and carry the weight of their traumas with them for the rest of their lives. Some people are warped beyond recognition into near demi-gods that must be constantly monitored and kept away from civilization. Worm is not a story that is afraid to dive into body horror and gruesome descriptions of war.

Despite its dark and what some would call edgy tone, Worm isn't a joyless read. It's just so much fun to read about Taylor and her friends learning to utilize their abilities to overcome seemingly impossible odds. There are many of those classic moments when a character is faced with an insurmountable death trap only to connive their way to victory with a clever application of both powers and analytical skills. I personally find these sorts of proactive problem-solving characters inspiring and probably my favorite archetype.

Wildbow has a talent for worldbuilding which shines in donation chapters and interludes that explore the world through new point of view characters similar to the interludes between sections of a Stormlight Archive novel. You will quickly find yourself sympathizing with these characters and wishing you got to spend more time with them. Truly it is the mark of a good story if the weight of a side character's story feels real enough that it could have been the main plot.

So is Worm for you? If you enjoy a sprawling mammoth of a story that gradually builds from street level heroics to apocalyptic proportions, then yes.

Ultimately I have to rate Worm by two standards. As the only web serial I have read, as the first draft of a story, it is remarkably well crafted and sucked me into its world completely, forcing me to give it a 10/10. As a completed work, something I would pick up on the shelf of a store and expect to be polished to superhuman levels? 8/10. There is work to be done here but for those of you who are waiting for the day you see this on a store shelf, I sincerely hope that day comes to pass because this is one hell of a story.

Hiu Gregg

115 reviews160 followers

August 31, 2017

Like most people who made it through the 1.68M words of Worm, I loved it. It's a fresh take on a superhero story, and one that I certainly haven't seen before in long form fiction. The "heroes" (and villains) we meet are real people with real issues, and although we are in our main POV characters head for the majority of the story, the interludes between acts allow us to see events from the perspective of a large number of side characters.

And speaking of side characters - Worm does this better than most other things I've read. The sheer length of Worm means it can afford to flesh out an impressively large cast of characters, and as a result every character feels like an individual.

This isn't to say that Worm is without its problems. The prose can at times be a little clunky and the dialogue fluctuates between wonderful and downright cheesy. The pace and intensity of the story are kept exceptionally high for exceptionally long periods - understandable considering the episodic nature of web serials, but a little fatiguing when you're binging the entire story. The story itself suffers a bit around the two-thirds mark, but manages to pull itself together for a thrilling conclusion.

It's a violent story, which isn't for everyone, and focuses on important real-world themes like bullying and abuse of power. Just as the characters feel like real people, their actions have real consequences. This makes for some brutal and gruesome scenes, but nothing that doesn't make sense within the context of the story.

Despite its flaws, Worm is a wonderful, nuanced, engaging, and addictive read. I fell in love with the characters, and was entranced by the story. This was my first web-serial, and it has impressed me enough to try a lot more.

Oliver

172 reviews

October 23, 2015

Update Again.
Well that happened. I finished reading Worm for the third time in three months. I'm even working on some fanart now. I'm still conflicted on the ending, but I don't hate it anymore. I still can't leave worm behind. I used to have a life, now I just have Worm. Maybe I can finally let myself move on to pact and twig now? Maybe? Also this reread was the first time I reallyread any of the comments, which are pretty much pure gold.

Update:
So I just reread Worm and punched a hole in my heart. Again. I just can't seem to leave this book behind. I'm not okay. Thanks for ruining my life in the most amazing way possible, Wildbow. Updating to 5 stars because Worm is too special.

Original:
I just finished Worm about 20 minutes ago and I'm still reeling. The end (If you discount arc Teneral) broke my heart. All in all, I absolutely loved worm; Skitter, Tattletale, Imp, Bitch, and the rest will not leave my memory for quite some time, if ever. The plot was engaging and the revelation about the source of powers was (at least for me) a bit mind blowing. That being said, I couldn't with a clear conscience rate this book 5 stars. Worm needs some polishing, a bit of revision, and the last arc kind of lost me. I would also love to see Worm published as a paperback, or at least an ebook, rather than being web-based which is a format that is not very convenient for me. However, I will definitely be reading anything Wildbow writes in the future, and I will be eagerly awaiting a sequel to Worm.

    all-time-favorites read-in-2015 reread-in-2015

Dylan

286 reviews

March 4, 2024

2 months, 1,680,000 words, and 6680 pages later, thus concludes my journey with Worm.

Writing about what makes this journey worth it is difficult, as I’m looking back on it and feeling a sense of awe. As this was a web serial, there is definitely some growing pain (though I still believe it is exaggerated), but as it transforms, it becomes something truly great and even brilliant at times (especially the last arc). Wildbow has written a small introduction to the series, so I will refer to that and expand upon his thoughts.

Yes, this is a superhero story in the same vein as Invincible. It’s really the perfect comparison, especially with the recent adaptation (though I’ve only read the comic) in people's heads. It heavily tackles interpersonal relationships, and the scope of the series expands in a similar fashion, though at the beginning it is much more grounded. It doesn’t feel like a ruthless deconstruction like Watchmen, but more like a subversion of superheroes, but it still feels like it’s honouring the genre it bases its story upon.

I should probably talk about the writing, as that's what piques most people's curiosity, as this is a web-serial and was written at, frankly, an insane rate of 1,680,000 words within 2 years. This is both impressive and can be concerning about the quality of the writing (quantity over quality). Firstly, a little background: though this is the author's first published work, he has been writing since grade 7. He studied English and applied linguistics in university. He began writing web serials as a way to encourage himself to follow a schedule and stick with a project long-term because he was constantly hitting dead ends and rewriting his works. So what is my perspective on Wildbow's writing ability? Firstly, he definitely grows a lot as the series continues, especially when depicting side characters through the interludes, and the final arc as a whole is brilliantly written. Some chapters can feel a tad long-winded, like certain fights can go on a tad too long, but for the most part, they are paced well and steadily. Due to its structure of having 30 arcs, there’s always a sense of momentum, even during the slice-of-life chapters. In the beginning, I thought the writing was adequate, but I never felt it was truly bad. Some of the dialogue can feel rough, but again, it irons out, and overall, he does a pretty good job at capturing character voices.

What I think Wildbow excels at as a writer is showing different perspectives filled with their own biases. It’s the beauty of the series structure, if you were reading the whole series entirely from Taylor's perspective, you would probably view a lot of individuals as shallow, bad, incompetent, or share Taylor’s worldview. However, due to its structure, we witness so many different perspectives and mostly read very distinct voices. This adds to another Wildbow strength, which is worldbuilding. It’s genuinely impressive how everything interlinks and makes the world feel so alive.

In terms of characters, I don’t want to discuss them deeply because finding out about Taylor and the gang is part of the fun. All I can say is that Taylor and all the characters are unreliable narrators, particularly Taylor, as she’s the main protagonist. She is very prone to self-rationalisation, her perspective is the correct one because of the context she provides. But then you actually think about it and you realise you might have been a little duped. It’s less her bullshitting to the reader, but it is to explain to herself why she chooses to go down certain pathways. It is this unreliability that makes her a very polarising character, and people can argue either way and generally have a good point.

So, when did I get properly hooked? I might be one of those rare people who liked it from the beginning, in terms of this being the only thing I’m going to read for the month mentality I had in February, it was around Arc 6–8. There’s a fundamental shift in the narrative, if you are a Dresden Files fan (if you are not sorry for the comparison), it’s basically like the Deadbeat of the series. It’s where I started being heavily interested and intrigued to see where the series would go from there. From that point, there’s a lot of brilliant chapters, arcs, and so inventive and ballsy with certain decisions being made. Arc 30, the final arc, is the culmination of that. Whatever I can say about the journey up to that point, it’s this arc that makes the whole series worth it. He takes what he has done so well up to that point and dials it up to 1000, and it’s just wild to witness. Reading certain sections of Arc 30, I was just speechless at what I was witnessing.

Do I have some criticisms? Absolutely. I’ve already said some action sequences can feel a tad long-winded, I wish certain character fates were dealt differently, I wish we had certain arcs, especially after Wildbow admitted he didn’t do a certain section that well, "I would rewrite that aspect" if the series ever got published on Amazon, etc. (which after a decade seems unlikely). Lastly, not exploring or dealing with the aftermath of a massive decision. It’s just done, and it’s never brought up ever again, strangely, despite Wildbow usually being a big fan of exploring the aftermath of major decisions.

I started this journey for a few reasons. First, I’ve eyed this project for a long time but often felt intimidated by its sheer size. Secondly, after I ironically introduced him to the series, he read it, then recommended me reading it (I know ironic) and one of my friends started a read along for the series, so I felt like joining her (though I eclipsed that schedule). I don’t believe you need to be into superheroes to enjoy this series. It’s a real genre bender, and I can see how it appeals to fantasy and sci-fi fans immensely. In conclusion, Worm by Wildbow is a wild journey filled with inventiveness and insight. Yes, it has its issues, but overall, it is well worth the adventure.

8.5/10

    fantasy science-fiction

Michael

124 reviews1 follower

January 15, 2015

That was good. I truly enjoyed this book. It really is probably the main reason that I didn't get quite as many books read last year as I would have liked, but now that I have finished it...

    2014 favorites superhero

Anni

103 reviews

Read

October 26, 2019

3.5 Stars 🌟

    fantasy-buddy-reads

MegaSolipsist

124 reviews

February 24, 2021

Wow.

This has to be, hands down, the best piece of superhero fiction ever written. By far. In fact, it may be the best story I have ever read. Certainly, I can't remember a book or series that stuck with me for as long as this one did. It's been eight months now, and my book hangover still hasn't ended.
This is one of the only series that I could legitimately describe as an emotional roller-coaster. My feelings went all over the place while reading it, and any moment spent not reading Worm was one bitterly regretted.

Worm is the most detailed, consistent and, above all, realistic view of a world with superheroes and supervillains that I've ever seen done. Ever. Possibly the most amazing part about this is that it was written as a blog story, updated twice-weekly, over two and a half years, and comes out as only a fraction smaller than A Song of Ice and Fire and just as complex. It took me two weeks to read it, and would have only taken one if I hadn't had to go to work.

Every character was a fully fleshed-out person, people I loved and loathed, with their own flaws and qualities and hopes and fears. There wasn't a single character that I could describe as flat or one-dimensional. Nobody carries an idiot ball and makes bad decisions just for the sake of plot. Every single action carries consequences that reverberate into the future of the series and affect the plot, and these consequences are meticulously thought out and believable.

In fact, I would say that 'consequences' is probably a major theme of Worm. It's hard to pin down any concrete themes, as the focus is on a great, believable story, but I would say that beyond the usual links between power and responsibility, Worm shows us that you can do the wrong things for the right reasons, but this doesn't make you a good person. Or that good intentions are meaningless without actions to support them.

This series changes a lot as it progresses, starting off as a somewhat dark and realistic look at a world with superheroes and turning into a sometimes cynical deconstruction of the genre as a whole, as well as a hopeful character study, a disaster survival story and even outright horror at several points. I don't think I've ever had a villain truly unnerve me as much as the introduction of Mannequin did, or a monster seem so terrifying as during the Leviathan arc.

Possibly the most interesting part of the world of Worm is the trigger events. While a number of people have the potential to develop superpowers, only those who have undergone extremely traumatic events of great physical, psychological or emotional stress trigger and develop powers. The result of this is a skew towards villainy, with even the heroes frequently having deep-seated issues and unresolved problems. And this is precisely what makes Worm stand out from other works in the superhero genre. Because every parahuman in the series, main characters included, is a fundamentally broken person.

Whether it's someone being killed with a forced drug overdose, a child slave forced to walk through a mine field or someone being forced to watch their loved ones suffer, nobody emerges unscathed. Paranoia, neuroses, uncontrollable rage, all of them feature in Worm. The main characters are isolated, insecure, sociopathic or suffering from suicidal depression.

The main characters also all have fairly low-level powers, and they never pull a victory out of their ass with some contrived deus ex machina or by simply willing themselves to fight harder. You know exactly what most of the superheroes and supervillains can do, and each victory for any of them is hard-earned through cunning and ingenuity. Nobody pulls out a new power as the plot demands, but plenty of them use their established powers in a new way or in a new combination with another parahuman. One of the main things I love about this series is how the most dangerous opponents are never the powerhouses, but rather the force multiplier/synergy combos.

None of these things are what makes Worm so amazing (although they certainly help), but rather how they combine and play off each other in incredible new ways.

In summary:
Incredibly detailed and realistic world.
Fascinating and very well-written characters.
The different ways that superpowers can be used are far more important than the raw power of them.
Intricate and meticulously planned out plot with impressive levels of foreshadowing when you look back at it.
The series runs the full gamut of genres, all seen through the lens of a world with superheroes.

Now that I've finished Worm, I'm going to have to read the authors next two series, Pact and Twig, because once he finishes Twig he'll be writing a sequel series to Worm, and I need to be ready for that the moment it starts.

Agung

95 reviews23 followers

October 5, 2017

Never have a fiction invoked so much emotion in me as Worm had.

Many people would urge you to read this story because it’s a superhero story “done right”; because Worm took the time to ponder on the way superpowers would change our lives should they be real; because Worm constructed its' world in such a believable way where everything is plausible within the context. Yes, Worm is all that; but it is also much more.

In this setting, people with superpowers are called ‘parahumans’. Many would have zoomed in on the ‘para’-part and dismissed the ‘human’-part, but in the end, they’re all humans with all the emotions, lives, and baggage humanities bring. Powers does not solve problems. What it does is to accentuate all the part of being a human. Parahumans are not the deific figures they appeared to be in our imaginations. They are, after all, people with powers, and people are flawed at their core.

“This world was sublime. A world that was awesome in the truer sense of the word, greater in so many respects. In a metaphorical sense, the peaks were higher, the valleys lower, works of art more artful, extremes more… extreme. It wasn’t a good thing. Make the mountains twice as tall and the chasms twice as deep, and things start crumbling.”

Everyone in this story is broken in some ways. The nature of powers makes the moment of trauma to be the central moment in character’s lives. These characters could not ever escape the darkest moment in their life; the irony of their powers makes sure that the trauma would never go away as they used those powers.

I recognize that a lot of the characters did bad things and make bad decisions, but it is a testament to the writing that I completely understand what the characters were thinking as they walked those dark paths. Sometimes, I wanted to reach through my computer screen, grab characters by their shoulders, and screamed at them: “STOP IT! Stop doing the things you’ve been doing! It’ll only hurt yourself and the people around you!”. At the same time, I struggled to convince myself that in their shoes—having all the life experience they had with all the traumas—I would be able to do things differently; that I would be able to make all the ‘right’ choices. I have a fantasy where I kidnapped a cadre of psychiatrists, locked them inside rooms filled with all the broken characters, and shouted: “FIX THEM!!”.

It’s easy to think that Worm is ‘grimdark’. People often accuse it of taking so much delight in grinding every shred of hope a character might have. Worm says that we are a wretched, petty species, and we have been given the power to destroy ourselves with. In contrast, Worm also told us of the story of heroes. In a world as dark as this, altruistic acts of heroism stood out in stark contrast. I cheered when heroes continued fighting despite the hopelessness around them and cried out as they were being struck down. I jumped out of my seat and hollered when heroes succeeded in pushing back against the tide of despair. The bile in my throat receded as I considered the possibility that the end might not be so nigh after all.

I was amazed when I found out that much of the book was an improvisation on the author’s part. In his mind, Wildbow knows that he wanted a handful of scenes in the story. How the character arrived at that scene and how they came out of it, however, was entirely on the character’s hand. Every decision any character made was completely understandable given the context they were in and nothing felt contrived.

Wildbow is the type of writer who writes by the seat of his pants. If G.R.R. Martin’s method of getting out from being stuck in a plotline is to stall by fleshing out the world and introducing new plot threads and characters, Wildbow’s method in dealing with being stuck is… to let the characters and circumstances play out on their own. If a central character got presented by a choice and the internally-sensible choice will make the story took on a different, harder course, Wildbow will plunge the story into that course. If a character got on the wrong side of a dice-roll, they die. The story is always on some kind of precipice, ready to plunge you into a wild ride.

God, I waxed so much poetry in this review. I love this story so much that I read this behemoth of a story at least seven times from front to back by now. Worm is without any doubt on the absolute top of the list of my favorite story.

Ben Chan

3 reviews

March 7, 2016

Worm started off as something I simply loved. It was a realistic look at how super powers would affect the world. We were given a main character who's power seemed weak, but creative use of her power let her keep up with the heavy hitters. wildbow is amazing at world building. Unfortunately, his beautiful world is full of absolute fuck-wits.

I have no desire to care for any of the main characters. The story can be summed up as Taylor doing the wrong things for the right reasons, but after a while, it seems to me as though those reasons are just petty rationalizations. Actions tend to speak louder than words, and much as she goes on about how it's all for a good cause, it doesn't change the fact that she does some really messed up stuff with her bugs. Then there's her sudden power spike. Initially, most of Taylor's heavy hitters included black widows, brown recluse spiders, and an assortment of other poisonous/venomous bugs. Except she ends up with some seriously broken abilities, which felt like the result of wildbow writing himself into a corner regarding the final boss. Half the fun of the series was seeing how creative she could be with her power. To change it the way wildbow did irked me. And this is just the main character.

Regent is a smarmy asshole that for some reason I actually like. Bitch had her dogs hurt people who were squatting in her territory. Territory that the people had no way of knowing was hers due to the serious rezoning of power occurring after Leviathan's attack. Every time Tattletale opens her mouth I want to throw something. She makes no mistakes, and no, I don't care that's her power. One of my favorite scenes in this book/series is when Piggot calls out Tattletale for all her shit. Because it's the first time Tattletale being there wasn't an instawin button for them. Imp is supposed to be a childish character, and that's ok, but her attitude just rubbed me the wrong way every time she spoke. Grue was one of my favorite characters. I loved how he called out Taylor for constantly putting the Undersiders into dangerous situations, BUT THAT PLOT POINT NEVER COMES UP AGAIN. I understand he said it while he was recuperating from torture, but this feels like one of those topics that need to be discussed.

I can go on and on, but at the end of the day, Worm isn't terrible. The problem is, when everyone in your world is an asshole, you really don't care who lives and who dies. Every time some major character was in a near death scenario, I wasn't thinking, oh my god please, not this character he/she is awesome. All I'm thinking is, alright, so what?

Worm can be pretty amazing, but I suppose the hardest part about reading it is trying to find a character you actually care about.

Dimitar Dimitrov

16 reviews17 followers

May 18, 2017

I can move on with my life now. Probably.

Worm was pretty amazing. Fast-paced, engaging, mind-blowing at times, provocative even. And it had perspective. A lot of it, at such a scale... I like perspective.

So much sleep was sacrificed because of Worm. At nearly 7000 pages, I was a slave of the story for quite a while.

It was all worth it. Go ahead and lose yourself in it if you dare.

Just be ready.

Nathan

21 reviews3 followers

June 10, 2016

The best superhero story I've ever experienced, of any medium, and one of my favourite of any genre.

I always had a difficult relationship with comic books while I was growing up. I wasn't in the least opposed to getting into them, but the partially-visual nature of the medium obviously cut down on the wordcount, and often resulted in what felt like too short of an experience for me. A voracious reader, I wasn't interested in staring at pretty art for a while; I wanted the story to move along, and the small size of your average issue only frustrated me further. It didn't help that, finding it difficult at best to keep up with any given comic series, I often felt like I was missing things (in terms of backstory/character history) when I took a stab at getting into a new comic. Even 'mainstream' stuff like Spider-Man or whatever else was popular.

Superhero films are more easily digestible, but cinema has its own limitations too. The length and structure of any given film only allows for so much complexity, and so much time spent with the characters in question.

Literature has always been where my heart is, but Superheroes have, for whatever reason, never had much of a presence in that field. I've never yet read a well-written Batman novel published by DC Comics (though looking at the company name, I may have an inkling why) and I think that's a shame. We all know it could be done, it just doesn't seem to happen much, if at all.

Worm is perfectly placed as literature; the kind of story that, as people often say, would be ruined entirely by an adaption to film, TV or even graphic novels. It's a long, complex and fast-moving story with an unconventional heroine. The length, complexity and fast pace of the story may in fact be a turn off for some people, as it was for some friends of mine. But for me, Worm transformed the way I think about its genre.

Taylor Hebert is a viciously bullied teenaged girl. The bullying, and the sheer cruelty of it, is actually key to the story. Earth Bet, the world the story is set, is essentially an alternate history diverging from ours in the early 1980's, when it's population started receiving superpowers. While it's not entirely common knowledge how people get them, their powers often arise in a moment of extreme trauma, the so called 'worst day of your life'. Accordingly, few people are able to 'trigger' as a new 'Parahuman', and keep a tight enough control on their emotions and morals to go on to become Superheroes.
Taylor is one of the few, but the nature of the story includes an examination of what makes you good or bad, so it would be spoilers to go much further into it.

Worm's strong points are an incredibly well-developed setting, with a massive and rich cast of characters, and an intriguing story that explores a lot of traditional superhero-genre tropes, subverting many and playing others straight in interesting ways. It bears repeating that this story is loooong, but if you enjoy it like I did I can't imagine you'll be much disappointed by that.

    all-time-favourites alternate-history female-protagonist

♥Xeni♥

1,152 reviews79 followers

May 8, 2020

Review from June 15, 2016

----

Review from November 06, 2014 to May 06, 2015

How do you review a novel that is essentially 10 books in one long series? I have no idea, but I'll give it a shot.

First off, this is an amazing book. And it's free on the internet (it's a webseries) so definitely check it out if you're at all interested in superheroes, villains, powers, robots, murder, mayhem, gigantic beasts wreaking havoc and a doomsday prophecy!

That all said, none of that actually does the tale justice. Wildbow made something incredible when he wrote Worm, and it is seriously good. Not only is the writing superb (aside from some areas that could use a bit of editing, but hey, it's a webseries and not published yet), but the plot takes amazing twists and turns you really don't expect.

It's a bit like when you read Game of Thrones and Ned Stark dies in the first few chapters and you're left wondering 'what's next?'. Or when Sanderson dumps the everything you suspected might happen into the first 100 pages of his Words of Radiance and you wonder what could possibly still occur. And then everything that happens is better than you could have ever hoped for.

That feeling is also here in Worm. And it's so good. Because yeah, it's a death and doomsday tale and lots of grimdark happenings occur, but the plot really makes it feel worth it.

Plot aside, the characters were excellent as well. I started out thinking it was just another teen / highschool coming of age story, but that's just the first few sections. After that it's definitely twisted into something more. Taylor Hebert is our main character, and her power is that she can control bugs. This sounded completely lame to me, but once you see all the crazy shit she gets up to, well, it slowly becomes one of the coolest powers out there. I wish there had been some pov's from more characters; more deeper insights into their minds / powers. There's a lot of that going on, but still. With hundreds of people showing a myriad of powers, it would be nifty to see how they deal with them. Don't get me wrong, we got a lot of that, but the story also focused a lot on Taylor, who irked me with her ways.

My favorite capes would have to be Miss Militia (I loved her background story), Contessa (when her actual role was revealed, I was seriously stoked), Tattletale (the way she pisses everyone off is awesome), Clockblocker, etc etc. I can't even remember them all right now.

What else is there to say? The tale is amazing. It took me 6 months to read (because breaks in between to get over some of the shit that goes down and it's just hella long) and I wish the journey wasn't over. Worlds are destroyed. People are dead. But what happens next? Who knows. Probably the same old, same old humanity fighting itself to pieces. I'll let my imagination take a more peaceful course for the beloved characters, though.

    2015-books-read audiobook dystopian

Susmita

48 reviews3 followers

September 22, 2016

TLDR: This book is going to satisfy your superhero fantasy craving like no Marvel Comics movie has ever done before. Do yourself a favour and read it if you want to know what superhero fantasy really feels like.

Worm was the first superhero fantasy novel that I read. Before Worm I have had brief but entertaining encounters with popular superhero movies. So when I began reading Worm, I was not expecting anything particularly out-of-this-world. Simply because I did not know what I could expect from it. And at 6,000 pages, Worm was not my first choice of book to read. I still picked it up because R read and was so taken by the book that he wanted me to experience the pleasure of reading an epic action-packed superhero drama.

So I began in February and I spent seven months getting to know Taylor Hebert and becoming invested in her story. From the get go Worm was unputdownable. Wildbow created a world and characters that are so endearing that as a reader I wanted to justify the fatal flaws of key characters.

The action sequences sometimes confused me and I did not know what I was reading or where the characters were and what was happening. And I guess action sequences are like that. Wildbow tries to put the reader at a vantage point to get a complete view of the battle ground where multiple teams of superheroes are fighting or strategising. So it is only fair that I was a little confused at some points. When the world is coming to an end, fights are bound to become complex and will involve a number of steps to actually give the final blow to the supervillain. So, full marks to Wildbow for showing me what superhero fights are really like.

I cannot watch another superhero movie and not wonder what Taylor Hebert would have done.

Worm is a superhero fantasy alright, but at the core Worm is the story of Taylor Hebert, a school girl who is a victim of bullying. For me Worm would not have been half as impactful if not for Taylor's backstory and her struggle with wanting to be a better person than those who bullied her.

There is so much about this book that is amazing. With every Arc Wilbow increased the stakes and turned characters from white to gray to black. A superhero is willing to do what others will not do to save humanity. Wildbow beautifully explores this quandary of the superhero.

I was left with a decision to make, no time to make it. Was I going to be moral, or efficient?

There is so much to say about this book, but I am a bundle of random thoughts rights now. I will stop here before I start weeping because I just finished the best superhero fantasy book ever.

    fantasy

Gints

82 reviews8 followers

December 8, 2013

Oh my! Worm is not your basic empowerment fantasy superhero story. It's also not an ignorant grimdark world of pain. It is thoughtful and aware. It is fell and wonderous. It worms its way from crisis to crisis to crisis of a different kind. From a world-ending threat to a character-ending threat, which is more scary. You keep hoping that things will get better, but they don't. And even when you're sure that this is how the story goes, you keep hoping that Taylor ends up alright. Yet it keeps always escalating and always teasing with a ray of hope.
Wildbow is a master of tension, giving respite when it's needed, only to crank things up soon after. More than that, he's a wirter with a productive combination of imagination and analysis, a surprisingly rare trait among superhero authors. At least when it comes to the applications of various powers.

–––Potential spoilers–––

I really enjoyed the overall flow of Taylor's narrative. The way you're always wishing for her to succeed, for people to finally listen and cooperate. Yet almost every victory she achieves is followed by a terrible loss. While there is a bit of plot armor as she is the viewpoint character (most of the time), she does get hurt in grievous and permanent ways. Sometimes it's as simple her enemies ending up better off than before their confrontation. Other times it's a further escalation, taking her away from goals, things and people she cares about just to maintain a chance that she'll maybe someday have the opportunity to get back to them.

Extra respect to wildbow for handling the ending so masterfully. You expect Taylor to finally catch a break. But she doesn't. But she does.

Worm (Parahumans, #1) (2024)

References

Top Articles
Latest Posts
Recommended Articles
Article information

Author: Duane Harber

Last Updated:

Views: 5701

Rating: 4 / 5 (71 voted)

Reviews: 94% of readers found this page helpful

Author information

Name: Duane Harber

Birthday: 1999-10-17

Address: Apt. 404 9899 Magnolia Roads, Port Royceville, ID 78186

Phone: +186911129794335

Job: Human Hospitality Planner

Hobby: Listening to music, Orienteering, Knapping, Dance, Mountain biking, Fishing, Pottery

Introduction: My name is Duane Harber, I am a modern, clever, handsome, fair, agreeable, inexpensive, beautiful person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.