SCP Foundation

Iris Through the Looking-Glass (Light Novel)

De: Akira

Narrado por: Michael Crouch

What's Wrong with This Picture?!

An ordinary boy encounters the paranormal when a photo of the same girl starts inexplicably showing up in every book he opens. One day, the girl reaches out and pulls him into the photo to her location: a cell in a top-secret facility belonging to the SCP Foundation, an organization dedicated to the research and containment of people, objects and phenomena that defy reality! Even worse: they've deemed him a threat to be contained, and he's going to have to work with them if he ever wants to see the outside world again!

©2018 Akira (P)2018 Akira

Honestly came out of nowhere

it was a suprise but a very welcome one. it was great seeing how the story would go

it was definitely different

It sounded like an audio production of a manga, a poorly written one. it reminds me of poorly written fanfic that is better meant for visual perusal and the audiobook was a bad decision. I honestly downloaded it for the SCP connection but that seemed tenuous at best.

Interesting but Ultimately Disappointing

At first I thought this was a super unique idea, but come to find out there is a whole Internet wiki collective that writes short stories like this, all related to the fictional SCP Foundation. So the only unique parts of this story, I'm guessing, are the characters and their unique traits. Also, while I'm complaining, the summary of this book is inaccurate. There is no struggle to escape the SCP or punishment of the MC, not really. In fact, the MC is as plain as vanilla pudding, as interesting as vanilla pudding, and as intelligent as vanilla pudding. He doesn't even have a name. His main role in this story is as a lens that allows us to view the goings on inside this mysterious SCP foundation. The main driving force of the story is the MC documenting his time there while interacting with other SCP Objects, which are objects that defy conventional logic and "object" here can also pertain to people, such as the MC and the girl in the photo. So the interesting parts of the story are learning about the SCPs, as well as the powers that the MC and the girl in the photo have, and how they relate to each other.

With that said, it was ultimately disappointing because the plot was very thin, a bit inconsistent, and just plain awkwardly written. Now, I understand that it is translated from Japanese to English and in the story he wears a collar that is translating English to Japanese for him in a awkward manor. so I'm not talking about that sort of awkward. I just mean that the writing isn't very good since it is written in first person from the point of view of the most boring and stupid teen in the world. Also, most of the dialogue from the MC is actually his internal monologue but, weirdly, the other characters often answer him as if he actually spoke. I kept thinking this was some sort of plot device that I would learn about later but I think it was just bad writing and/or a bad translation. When you couple that with a lackluster narrator, it was hard to figure out what parts were in his head and what parts he was actually speaking. As I said, awkward.

This whole thing would have been miles better if there was more details about the various SCPs and less internal monologuing by the world's lamest MC. I would have loved a more indepth look at everything. But I guess since this is just a small contribution to the collective SCP Foundation works, the author felt that details were somehow redundant?

On a happy ending note, the ending of the story was mostly satisfying in that we get an answer to what was going on with the MC. However, even that was a bit unsatisfying in that it still left some things unanswered and really needed another chapter or two to fully make a happy ending and provide some closure to the reader. I was sort of left asking, "So did -beeeeeep- ever go back to -beeeeeep-?"

Good narration doesn't make up for awful writing

I wanted to like this bc I'm a big fan of SCP, but the writing was not good. Very show don't tell, and felt like a subpar story shoved in around interesting SCP objects. One part in the middle had some action and got me hooked, but that lasted for about 15 minutes, and went back to characters who felt completely cardboard and an attempt at human connection that felt like a computer wrote it.