So I’m a huge fan and advocate of the Worm web serial and this is the much anticipated sequel. To be honest, I first started reading some months after Wildbow started writing it but bounced off after only a few chapters. I’ll go into why more later but it was so infuriating how everyone uses therapy-speak constantly and is so careful, like walking on eggshells, around each other. When I learned that he had finished it earlier this year, I decided to give it another shot and eventually powered through though it was at times quite a chore.

Two years after Gold Morning, most of the surviving population of Earth Bet have moved to other worlds with the North Americans living in a single megacity on Earth Gimel. Victoria Dallon seems to have recovered a normal human body but her invisible force field is still stuck in the form of the giant blob of flesh her sister Amy turned her into. She has retired from superheroing and is still searching for her place in this new society. While being a trainee in the Patrol Block, a sort of civilian-staffed successor organization of the PRT, she is forced to use her powers when villains attack an event they are providing security for and has to leave. Later, she is contacted by Jessica Yamada who wants her to meet a group of patients she has been providing therapy, all of whom are psychologically damaged in various ways. One of them is Sveta, the Case-53 Victoria befriended while recuperating. They have all been getting better under treatment but Jessica is alarmed when they decide to form a new superhero team together. Jessica means for Victoria to give them realistic advice and perhaps dissuade them, but Victoria ends up becoming a member of this new team.

As with Worm and most of the other web serials out there, this is a massively long, sprawling work that would span at least half a dozen books if not more if it were published in a more traditional format. Victoria Dallon, Glory Girl in Worm, is indeed the protagonist this time around but there are also many, many more interludes that tell the story from the point of view of the other characters. The story starts out on a relatively modest scale as Victoria tries to rebuild her life but the stakes escalate massively soon enough. The main plot deals with the fact that the shard network has been damaged following Scion’s defeat, resulting in the catastrophic broken trigger events of increasing frequency. Some villains are experimenting with understanding how the shards work and Earth Gimel is at the same time dependent on resources of other Earths while being threatened by them. Finally there’s the growing realization that even without the villains interfering, the shard network is doomed to completely break down eventually, which would effectively destroy all the worlds.

Note however that while there is indeed an epic story going on, this is not a plot-centered piece of literature. Instead, the focus is on the internal psychologies of its many characters. Victoria is a participant in many of the key events that form the main plot but as she is not a member of the Wardens, the successors of the Protectorate, she isn’t one of the key movers and doers. It’s also worth noting while Worm spanned years including its infamous time skip, the main plot of Ward is compressed into maybe two or three months. The many interludes and flashbacks of course recount the stories of individuals from many years back of course but it really is kind of ridiculous how little time passes in the present day narrative. A problem for me is that Victoria’s inner voice is largely dominated by how traumatized she has been by her experience with Amy and she is estranged from her parents as a result. This completely defines her character in this story and makes reading from her perspective extremely wearying over time.

But then the same goes for almost every character in this as well. Worm of course is a setting in which people get superpowers through traumatic experiences, meaning that everyone is broken in some way. The fact that the members of Victoria’s new team met each other from being part of the same therapy group means that they are especially broken. Wildbow uses this to plumb what feels like a deep exploration of unique and weird pathologies. Don’t get me wrong, the stories of some these basketcases are incredibly interesting, such as the child tinker Lookout whose problem is that she loves too much, too easily and has no boundaries whatsoever. But it seems that this is very much what mainly interests Wildbow as a writer with the result that he takes a very lackadaisical attitude to the plot and the setting. I mean, as part of the story, the characters get to explore shardspace which operates according to what is very similar to dream logic. So that means lots and lots more psychoanalyzing. It also results in a world in which not a single person seems to be sane. It’s just too much.

The setting makes no sense as it is incomprehensible how they could have or why they would even want to build an entire new city from scratch, complete with malls and skyscrapers, when this is really a post-apocalyptic society which can’t even feed itself. Why not just sprawl out in wooden huts and agricultural communities as land isn’t an issue? It feels like Wildbow wanted to set it amidst the usual urban environment that most superhero stories take place in without thinking much further than that. So instead of Fallout style living in shacks and going back to basic farming, we somehow have Victoria worrying about fashion styles, gripping that her bagel isn’t up to par and upset that her application for university has been rejected twice. Why do they even have a university when the world just ended two years ago and everyone should still be picking up the pieces and refugees are still arriving from Earth Bet?

The battles too feel unsatisfying as opponents are as powerful as the plot needs them to be. One particular enemy, March, goes through throngs of assembled heroes with a nary a pause. Then she gets an interlude which tells her side of the story and after that of course she becomes vulnerable and then is easily defeated. This is Wildbow’s signature style being too obvious and his peculiar insistence on sticking to it no matter the harm that it causes to our suspension of disbelief. I still cared about what happens to the characters because he is great at creating them and bringing them to life. But honestly the battles and fights are not interesting at all because you know that it’s all bullshit as none of it matters and there is no consistency in power and ability levels at all. In the end, come what may, each character will arrive at the logical conclusion of their individual arcs in a manner that best satisfies the needs of drama.

So this means that though I absolutely loved Worm, I found reading Ward to be a terrible chore and I don’t think I’m going to read another Wildbow story after this either. It’s clear to me that he is much more of a horror writer than a superhero fiction writer and he should really commit to that. I also think that he’s grown so confident in his moment to moment writing ability, and to be fair, his mastery of prose truly has improved by leaps and bounds, that he no longer cares much about worldbuilding or plotting ahead. This kind of approach may work in smaller scale stories with a limited number of characters, and on the epic scale of a story like this, it’s a mishmash of plotlines that make no sense at all when put together. I’m noping out and I really can’t recommend this to anyone.