K is a successful, although somewhat burnt-out, 30-something obsessed with a game known colloquially as Rabbits. An immersive challenge with origins shrouded in mystery, K delves into the game while never making a genuine attempt to play it himself. One evening, millionaire Alan Scarpio—a rumored winner of one of Rabbits’ previous iterations—confronts K and tells him there is something wrong with the game. The next day, Scarpio goes missing. K is left to solve the mystery, with the help of his friends Chloe and Baron, before the next iteration begins and something horrible follows.
Some true stories are easier to accept if you can convince yourself that at least part of them are fictional.
Rabbits immediately absorbs the reader into a confusing and fascinating world of plot twists and intrigue. A blend of the real-world alternate reality game Cicada 3301, The X-Files, and a Christopher Nolan film, this thriller is captivating and immersive but ultimately suffers from uneven pacing and the nebulous nature of its own in-universe mechanics.
Miles’ dreary Seattle anchors the novel, but it is untethered just enough to absorb the reader into the ever-shifting reality that K traverses as he follows the intricate clues and connections of the game. The first half of the novel is notably stronger than the second half, and successfully maintains the tension necessary for a book that centers around a slow trickle of clues. The magic, suspense, and horror of Rabbits lie in its ambiguity – there are no rules, no obvious progression, and no standard goal. The players are engaged in following clues that could lead to an incredible, potentially disastrous, or even fatal conclusion.
“Look, it’s not a game—or, at least, it’s not only a game.”
The book’s tone relies on the essential suspension of tension, but continual exposition, particularly when it comes to K’s background, halts the pace. Presumably written by K sometime after the events of the book have resolved, the first-person narrative is plagued with info-dumping. Its nature is inorganic and proves to be exasperating as the exposition informs K’s increasingly unreliable reality, all while being forcefully introduced as a disruptive aside. Bouts of info-dumping from other characters also slows the narrative, and the murky nature of the game becomes inexorably tied to ill-timed exposition. This often results in K and the other characters making baffling choices that seem to lack any urgency surrounding a game that is continually revealed to be dangerous and possibly deadly.
A stalling narrative and deliberately cryptic nature of K’s reality damages the already chaotic climax, which falls flat due to clunky dialogue and an overwrought twist. It is, unfortunately, compounded by a weak conclusion that fails to resolve the events of the book satisfactorily and is too ambiguous in the wake of a story that guided the reader so exactly.
“What I’m talking about is feeling like the world around you is slowly forgetting the world you know, one tiny piece at a time.”
Rabbits is intriguing and exciting, and Miles’ impressively brings together disparate ideas and elevated concepts. An award-winning quadruple threat as a writer, director, producer, and musician, Miles is probably best known for his podcast The Black Tapes, and Rabbits is a stand-alone accompaniment to his latest podcast of the same name. There is so much in this book that speaks to why he has been so successful in visual and aural storytelling, but I don’t feel it was overall successful in execution. It would have behooved to this novel to be a bit shorter or to have used its length more wisely, and to use the same clever world-building and intricate connections formed in the game more with the characters, instead of relying on so much exposition.
Rabbits is an enjoyable novel that suffers from some pacing issues, and while the ending was unsatisfying, the journey mostly made up for it. I feel that fans of alternate reality games and pop culture junkies—particularly older millennials—will find a lot of joy in the references and puzzles sprinkled through Rabbits. Of course, the fans of Miles’ previous works will probably also find this adventure delightful.
Rabbits, published by Del Rey, is out now. It is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, and other retailers. You can follow Terry Miles on Twitter.
I was given an advanced copy of Rabbits by NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.
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