Didn’t hate this one, so at least there’s that.

So I had this huge brilliant review* for this book, which I stupidly wrote in the review space over on Goodreads, and upon being two sentences away from finishing it, my browser decided to to go non-responsive, crashed and deleted the whole thing. I will note that this ONLY ever happens to me while using Internet Explorer on computers that aren’t mine. Why does anyone have a computer that has nothing but IE? WHY. What terrible person makes these decisions? I hope they regret everything.

*It wasn’t brilliant. I’m just angry. Whyyyyy does IE suck SO HARD. I KNOW it sucks. Whyyyyy didn’t I save my review??? This isn’t even the first or second or third time this has happened to me. Will I never learn. Honestly.

So long story short I’m not writing that review again. That seems like torture. Instead I will sum it up in bullet points, from what I can remember:

• Liked the secondary characters for the most part: Mulder’s friend Gimble and Gimble’s father, The Major (a conspiracy theorist). Also thought the murder was good, creepy and well thought out, although a bit too reliant on a forty-plus year old fantasy novel (if you’re planning on reading Michael Moorcock’s Elric Saga, don’t read this; it spoils the ending of the series completely).
• This wasn’t nearly as bad as it’s partner, the Scully book, but it didn’t quote capture Mulder’s voice. It also had some weird easter eggs that felt forced in, like Mrs. Mulder mentioning the vacuum from “Paper Hearts” while on the phone with Mulder, or the killer turning out to be Monty Propps at the end, the serial killer from season one’s “Young at Heart,” where it was mentioned that Mulder was the one who wrote the profile that originally captured him. Only, this book decides to have him write that profile at seventeen years old, without any training. I mean, come on. And he just so happens to get that profile to the FBI, and they like it? And give him future career networking opportunities? It’s just too much of a stretch.
• The whole Phoebe thing was pointless. I spent the first 2/3 of this book being annoyed that Garcia had decided to have Mulder meet his old lover Phoebe (whom we met in season one’s “Fire”) when they were teenagers in Martha’s Vineyard, rather than at Oxford, and on top of that she was his “best friend,” and totally out of character. Eventually, I realized it was probably another Phoebe, and that conclusion turned out to be correct when her last name was revealed. But, come on, man. You can’t give a character the same name as one of your hero’s previous lovers, if that character is also a previous lover. How confusing and pointless it is. Also, she was just a pointless character to begin with, only there because in YA, the hero has to have a girl to pine over. This book would have been better without her entirely, and just focused on Mulder’s relationship with his strange but sweet friend Gimble instead.
• I will accept that the Syndicate is involved in Mulder’s life because they were canonically involved in the show, and also the Cigarette Smoking Man is obsessed with Mulder.

It was just okay. If they publish sequels (which I know they wanted to do), I won’t be reading them. And I don’t think they will, anyway. I don’t believe these have sold well at all (probably didn’t help that most of the new season wasn’t very good).

Bottom line: if you were even going to bother trying this, don’t.