Book Club: Phillip is one of the Collectibles in Control.
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Book Club Thoughts
By Phillip P.
"Unless You" hooked me right away. It began with visceral dismemberment scenes, and this great unsettling vibe created by the unexplained creature they named "the Fix".
As an avid horror fan, I loved how this story veered from the genre conventions into something a little more, for lack of a better word, weird. Everything felt familiar, but just a little off. The characters even comment on it, saying how their lives felt out of control, as if they were just programmed to perform the same empty actions over and over. Very meta.
And I loved the way they left the ending wide-open. What happened to the guy ordered to watch those monitors for the rest of his life? Did the Fix get him? Is he dead? Did he end up in the parallel reality with the others? We don't know. And that's okay.
All in all an interesting read. I'll give it a solid 4/5. Points deducted for some of the clunky dialogue and unbelievable choices the characters made. I mean, who the hell would follow orders from their boss in the middle of such horrible slaughterfest? But I guess I shouldn't demand too much realism from a work of fiction.
Location[]
The file can be found in the Containment Sector. It is located on the ground floor of the Archives, in an office in the southeast corner of the area.