Review: 'We Met in the Forums' by Rob Ulitski

2/5 stars ⭐

I will start this review by listing the things I liked about this book before I move on to justifying my two-star rating. I love reading work by indie and self-published authors because it showcases the best part of writing, which is being purely, unabashedly creative and wanting to share what you’ve made with the world. Anyone who has written a novel has achieved something they should be incredibly proud of no matter how it’s received. I hope this review can be taken in good faith despite my criticisms!

Firstly, I love the title, and the concept of Reddit-style internet threads blended with prose. With the current popularity of ARGs and digital horror, I think a device like this could work really well. This is also the only book I have ever purchased because of TikTok, so props to author Rob Ulitski for his clever and engaging marketing! The concept – a mysterious fungal infection caught by spending time in the sea – avoids being categorised into a typical zombie story with its unique take on both how you catch the disease, and its symptoms. There were some pretty gnarly descriptions in here that worked well, and I loved the inclusion of things like fuzz/mold growing on skin and teeth. It’s gross, and I love that!

Unfortunately, there were many aspects of this book that did not work for me. I think a lot of it comes down to plot and the lack of a discerning editor’s eye on the prose. Let’s start with plot: We Met in the Forums has a great titular hook, but does nothing with it, as the forum posts themselves have little to no impact on the story whatsoever. It’s such a shame because, as I said before, the meshing of digital horror with the traditional novel could be really great! Speaking of horror, I think Ulitski goes a little too far sometimes in his descriptions of the fungal infection. Since prose lacks the visual elements of film, just describing how something looks will only get you so far, and can often get quite confusing for readers. The real horror came from Josh’s reaction to what he was seeing, but we didn’t have nearly enough of that. Instead, we are treated to moments of extreme violence or grossness (involving various bodily fluids) that felt as if they were only included for shock value, but just didn’t land for me. I don’t think this was helped by the flat nature of the two main characters, Josh and his fungus-riddled bestie/lover Leo. They both felt like blank slates which the plot was projected onto, rather than fully realised humans that are experiencing these things for real. If more time had been spent developing them as unique and layered people, the later horror would have been more effective because of the reader’s attachment to these characters. 

Now I’ll move on to the technical issues that I feel really hindered this book. This isn’t necessarily an indictment of Ulitski’s writing skills, because all manuscripts look like this at some point, but I just wish I could have read a version of this book that had been edited and redrafted! There were many, many grammatical errors littered throughout  – sometimes the wrong tense is used, other times the wrong word. There is a noticeable lack of sentence variation (I noted down page 150 in the Kindle edition as a great example of this) which makes it read as stilted and unnatural, especially because it’s told in first person. Ulitski also has a bad habit of starting scenes way too early, causing him to quickly explain a sequence of mundane activities to get us to the point where the interesting stuff begins. Here is a paraphrased quote from page 148 that showcases this problem:

‘I stopped driving around in circles, and decided to start on the route home … I ended up on the hill with a burger and milkshake … after filling my belly … I was ready to face home’. 

None of this (which I’ve cut a decent bit out of) is providing us with anything engaging, nor is it moving the plot forward. We have just wasted our time with a character moving from A to B, when the scene should have just started with B! There are many instances like this where whole sections could be removed to improve pacing and stop readers getting bogged down in uninteresting details. Similarly, there are certain characters and plotlines that I think could have been cut in order to streamline and focus the story better. Josh’s two friends, for example, don’t serve the story in any meaningful way and could be completely cut without affecting the plot. The scientist Martina does provide some exposition and development in understanding the disease, but I think that whole subplot could be reworked or removed too. Perhaps just a nice tight focus on Josh and Leo’s own online investigation, their subsequent cultish fanbase, and the follies of their quest to figure this whole thing out? That would have worked better in my opinion, and also weaved in more of that digital horror vibe that I was so sad not to see. My one final nitpick is the use of slang, which in my opinion never ages well and doesn’t belong in novels. Things like ‘NPCs’ and ‘she chose violence’ (p. 127) only serve to take me out of the story, and in a few years they will lose any of the humour they currently have as internet culture forgets them.

Overall, Ulitski has a promising concept here, I just wish he’d taken bigger swings with the actual forums of We Met in the Forums, and tidied up those editing bits I mentioned. That’s one of those things that you can become blind to when you’ve spent so much time staring at the same manuscript, so I empathise with that. He’s fantastic at marketing himself, so I’m sure that if my totally unsolicited advice is acted on, his next book will be a success!