This was a very different read for me. My best friend loves the podcast, so I figured I would read the book when I saw it available. I cannot wait to buy this for her when it comes out!

I am sorry to report that this did not work for me. As a fan of Terry Miles' podcasts, this makes me sad, but I think these stories work better in that format. It's possible that if the audiobook has a similar production value that it will distract from the thin story here. I had listened to all of the Rabbits podcast, so I already knew what was going on and it made reading this a bit of a slog. I honestly couldn't get through it. I am sorry to have to throw the towel in on this one because I was really looking forward to it, but it looks like it worked for some other readers.

This novel was a little outside my usual--not being a gamer or anything like that--but I enjoyed it and can see the appeal. It will resonate most with people who do enjoy gaming and mystery, I think.

What happens when games and reality become intertwined? This is the heart of Rabbits, a fantastic novel by Terry Miles. The story is a cross between Ready Player One and the Matrix. Rabbits is a game that most of the world is unaware of and those who are aware of it do not talk about it. Those who talk about it are disappearing but are they dying or being sent to alternate dimensions? The game must be won for the sake of everyone.

The plot, characters, and writing pulled me in and kept me interested from the first page to the last. I highly recommend this book.

Addictive, adrenaline-pumping, and a total mind f*ck. This is not my usual read, but holy smokes it is one of the most surprising books I've read in a LONG time.
(Full review to come on The Nerd Daily as Seven Jane)

I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I was invited to review this book and I was hesitant to do so because the subject matter was not something I gravitate towards.
It was flighty, hopping from one scene to another, somehow assuming you knew what they were taking about even though I was clueless to the topic changes. I didn't care for the book, but that doesn't mean you won't, honestly it just wasn't my cup of tea.
Give it a try, I bet you'll like more than I did.

What a crazy but great ride! When I read the description for this book I was all in, wanted to read it seeing it was about a secret game you are not supposed to talk about. I have not listened to the podcast so I went I to it without knowing anything. I enjoyed the premise and execution of the book and the world the author presented. The characters were likable and I could relate to a few of them in different levels.

There were a few times I got a bit confused but it was fast paced and could not put it down. I was taking it everywhere with me to read and one last page or chapter turned into 2 or 3.


https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3969809514

Great for fans of Ready Player One by Ernest Cline and most of Neal Stephenson’s works. This book takes you on an engaging journey from the very beginning. Touching upon numerous fields of study, there is something for everyone. And just when you think you’ve grasped the truth, everything you know shifts to another dimension of reality, leaving you with more questions than when you began. With engaging characters and creative concepts, this story will keep you reading well past bedtime!

From my post at https://thoughtsalongthewayblog.wordpress.com/2021/04/27/rabbits-by-terry-miles/

{Available June 8, 2021}

Wow, such a wonderfully twisted wild ride!

I kept thinking in the early stages that I was so familiar with this story. I thought it must be based on a a short story I had read, but I had forgotten that I had listened to a podcast with the same name. The podcast whetted my thirst, but it didn’t completely prepare me for the intense journey that was Rabbits. You will find yourself frequently thinking you know what’s going on, only to discover that you are as wrong as the characters in the story.

It is really challenging to put people through this many twists and turns without losing them. Terry Miles does an amazing job of this, giving us enough information to think we *might* know what’s going on and then wrenching that out from under us. Even better, the book has a twisted, but understandable conclusion—something SciFi has been lacking since the influence of Gardner Dozois left writers thinking they are supposed to be inconclusive.

This book is thoroughly engaging and entertaining. The only thing preventing me from giving it my highest praise is that the characters seem unable to say "Hello" without dropping F-bombs. The cumulative effect goes past annoying to offensive, and adds a totally avoidable barrier to full enjoyment of the story.

(Full disclosure: this book was provided to me free for pre-publication review.)

Thanks to Del Rey+ Terry Miles for an advanced reader copy of RABBITS in exchange for an honest review.

This was a good amount of fun! RABBITS is one of those books that sticks with you because reading it is an entire experience. It feels like one of those world shifting books, like you’re reading something seismically different than anything else, and you’re in on something secret, like you’re a participant of the game itself.

In RABBITS, we follow K as they navigate through the game Rabbits. The game itself is ultra-secretive. You don’t even know if you’re playing, who else is playing, what the stakes are, or what the prize is. There’s rumors of CIA, secret societies, conspiracies, world bending, and more. The game is about connections, coincidences, and puzzles, and the globe is the playing board. But something in this iteration of the game has gone wrong, and it’s up to K to fix it before the end of life as we know it.

A couple critiques. My first is that at some points the writing just feels a bit...off. A paragraph ending on a weak statement, or the dialogue being a bit choppy. It’s nothing that really turned me off at any point, but it was noticeable.

My second, and biggest, critique is that the ending is rather disappointing. This is a book where you’re discovering and uncovering until the very last page. But within the last five percent of the book, everything that had been built, explained, explained again, woven, and imagined...gets a lackluster wrap up. I think we could have done without the last few stops on the map of the story to wrap things up in a more concrete way that matches the thoroughness within the rest of the book.

Ultimately, this felt like MR PENUMBRAS 24 HOUR BOOKSTORE on secret, weapons grade drugs. If you like ultra-weird creepy conspiracy based puzzles and galaxy brained concepts sprinkled with magic science and tied up in non-stop action, this is for you.

What a bizarre book. I love the idea of a secret game hidden in messages. It kind of gave me Ready Player One vibes but throw in some retro video gaming. The only word I could think of that really describes this book is CHAOTIC. The story just jumps around so much at the beginning that I was completely lost. Which is never a good thing when starting a book. It evened out some towards the middle but that word still stuck with the plot through the book.

What do you get if you mix Dark Matter (Blake Crouch), Finity (John Barnes), and a dash of Ready Player One (Ernest Clines)? Well, you get Rabbits.
The basic idea is that there is a GAME played out in the world and us where the clues are odd occurrences that allow a player to follow along to the next clue. The protagonist is K, a somewhat OCD person who is obsessed with the game ever since a traumatic childhood experience. This, by the way, is almost the total character description... interestingly, there are never gender pronouns or physical description given of the protagonist (an interesting authorial choice that can allow readers to picture the personify however they want... but also removes any preconceptions that might come from whatever description might be given). K is told by someone respected that the GAME (Rabbits) is broken and only K can fix it. Thus begins a search for clues and patterns through a series of pop culture references and shifting realities.

As a positive, the story moves along rapidly and the book is a very quick read. Unfortunately, the protagonist is presented as highly intelligent, wealthy, and likable yet often acts like none of these things. The author gives fancy, descriptive Italian names to the dishes K prepares, but seems to run out of pages in the book and has to rush the ending. The game at the heart of the books is super secret and dangerous but K gives lectures on it to random groups of people and all over the world people are playing it and sharing information. It would be like if the first rule of flight club was "don't talk about fight club unless you need to talk something out with others or make money".
In fact, I think the missed potential is what bothered me the most. The book has great ideas that could result in exploring the possibilities of multiverse ideas, but the ending kinda shrugs and says "meh, having a multiverse seems like a bit much... it was probably just coincidence any way." AAAARRRRGGGHHH... why did I just spend hours reading this then???

Here's the thing... I wanted to like this book. A LOT. Somehow though, almost none of the characters really had enough personality to really make me care who lived and who died (exception: Emily... a spin-off novel exploring more fully what she says she went through would be fascinating because it would fulfill the potential in a way this novel didn't quite). In the end, while it was an OK read, it couldn't take that next step to becoming a must-read in the genre.

Thank you to the publisher (Del Rey) and Netgalley for the chance to read a prerelease copy of this book.

Excellent gripping novel. There already are the inevitable comparisons to RP1, even the television series <i>Lost</I>, but Miles' debut work shouldn't be compared...it stands on its own. Miles doesn't overwhelm the reader with such as he unfolds the world and mystery surrounding the protagonist with a slow pace that accelerates until a frenzied whirlwind of surreal twist after twist. And the ending? A twist and a half. I am not familiar with the podcast on which the world of this novel is based, but I can say this had me rushing through pages to find out what happens next, what the next clue...or twist... was going to be. Readers of RP1 might enjoy this, but it is only tertiarily similar. As I said, it stands on its own.

I received a review copy of this from <a href="http://www.netgalley.com">NetGalley</a>

[I rarely summarize fiction plots, mainly because I think it unfair to the author - there are plenty of people who do for those on the hunt, and there is almost always an extra teaser blurb somewhere - and I think it unfair to the reader who, like me, dislikes spoilers.]

"A deadly underground game might just be altering reality itself in this all-new adventure set in the world of the hit Rabbits podcast.

It’s an average work day. You’ve been wrapped up in a task, and you check the clock when you come up for air - 4:44 p.m. You check your email, and 44 unread messages have built up. With a shock, you realize the date is April 4 - 4/4. And when you get in your car to drive home, your odometer reads 44,444.

Coincidence? Or have you just seen the edge of a rabbit hole?

Rabbits is a mysterious alternate reality game so vast it uses the entire world as its canvas.

Since the game started in 1959, ten iterations have appeared and nine winners have been declared. The identities of these winners are unknown.

So is their reward, which is whispered to be NSA or CIA recruitment, vast wealth, immortality, or perhaps even the key to the secrets of the universe itself.

But the deeper you get, the more dangerous the game becomes. Players have died in the past - and the body count is rising.

And now the eleventh round is about to begin.

Enter K - a Rabbits obsessive who has been trying to find a way into the game for years. That path opens when K is approached by billionaire Alan Scarpio, rumored to be the winner of the sixth iteration. Scarpio says that something has gone wrong with the game and that K needs to fix it before Eleven starts, or the whole world will pay the price.

Five days later, Scarpio is declared missing.

Two weeks after that, K blows the deadline: Eleven begins.

And suddenly, the fate of the entire universe is at stake."

I freely admit I've never heard of the podcast where this book is set, but now I HAVE to learn more about all of it because isn't a better Ready Player One?

Wow, this was a wild ride of a book. I loved the pop culture references. Still trying to process all the twists and turns that “k” went through.

Thank You to Netgalley for this ARC copy of RABBITS by Terry Miles.

I am blown away by this book. Think about it as if Ready Player One, The Game, Ant Man, and Inception all had a baby - this would be that frigging child creation. This story is so detailed and intricate, as a fellow aspiring author I have no idea how Mr. Miles kept it all straight. I can't wait to check out the Rabbits podcast.

Rabbits follows the life of, K. K's adventure begins in a 80"s style arcade ripe with authentic old school video games. From there, the illusion of a game called Rabbits peaks his curiosity. Always a child of patterns and coincidences, he becomes obsessed. It doesn't take long until he finds himself falling into the proverbial rabbit hole of what is the internet and all in entails.

With the help from friends Baron and Chloe they navigate from one item to the next travelling on what they believe most closely takes them further into the game. When K starts losing time and his perception of linear space begins to deteriorate so does his view of the game. Reality sinks in that the layers to this thought process are infinite.

Only when he is stripped of every support system is he able to open his mind and allow the pieces to fall into place. But, will it be too late?

Read this book. Your welcome.

Oh my word....this was so confusing. Maybe it would have helped if I listened to this Podcast? I had high hopes because I love the read alike books and shows they mentioned in the synopsis. But, this book was not for me. I am not sure what to rate it...

I came across this book through NetGalley and had never heard of the podcast rabbits before so I’m not sure if this is a continuation, prequel, or something else. That said the author gave enough information that I don’t think I was missing anything by not knowing. This book was intense, different, gripping, and hard to put down. I did take a break about 52% through but when I returned it was hard to put down again. So glad I came across it.

A solid 3.5 stars.

Tales about the multiverse, alternate dimensions of time, parallel existences - are all absolutely FASCINATING t0 me. This book reminds me of the early works of Blake Crouch. It has that breakneck, frantic, crazy sci-fi fantasy vibe about it, and this is a complement because Crouch is one of my all time favs!

What I enjoyed about Rabbits:
*The concept...an underground game with secretive players looking for patterns and coincidences in the universe to win unknown prizes, notoriety, and seemingly vast secrets to our existence.
*The book gets deep really quick, and I love the shock value, the twists and turns, the crazy flashbacks, the excitement of what is to come next!
*The way this book actually ties into bizarre circumstance of real life. It's Berenstein Bears! Fight me! I remember reading these books as a child! I went down a rabbit home (pun intended) on Google reading about the Mandela Effect and *mind blown*.

What was just meh:
* The characters were kind of bland in terms of their development. I definitely was not attached or invested in any them. They all kind of felt interchangeable.
*TONS of loose ends that never got tied up or explained. I guess you are supposed to be able to drawn your own conclusions but I wanted more info on the Magician, what exactly is that black being/substance/cloud/creature, is the world truly saved, what happened to Emily, etc.

This book has an interesting plot involving multiple dimensions, a game, mysterious deaths and all kinds of geeky references to 80’s stuff but i found it to be just ok. I had trouble with recognizing when things went awry as there were just too many characters and not enough information to make sense to me. The ending wasn’t really that satisfying either and left me with questions. The writing is pretty solid overall. I didn’t think character development was great but again I think that was mostly due to too many characters jumping all over the place. I would read something else by the author in the future as this is his first novel and he may get better. He apparently does podcasts and I might take a listen to one.