Out of Spite, Out of Mind

Magic 2.0, Book 5

By: Scott Meyer

Narrated by: Luke Daniels

Length: 7 hrs and 34 mins

Publisher's summary

When you discover the world is a computer program, and you figure out that by altering the code you can time travel and perform acts that seem like magic, what can possibly go wrong?

Pretty much everything.

Just ask Brit, who has jumped around in time with such abandon that she has to coexist with multiple versions of herself. Now, Brit the Elder finds that her memories don't match Brit the Younger's. And there's the small matter of a glitch that's making Brit the Elder's body fritz out. Brit the Elder's ex-boyfriend Phillip wants to help her, but he'll have to keep it secret from his current girlfriend, Brit the Younger, who can't stand her future self.

Meanwhile, Martin is trying to protect Phillip from a relentless attacker he somehow hasn't noticed; Gwen is angry because Martin accidentally proposed to her; Gary tries to help the less fortunate, with predictably disastrous results; and an old nemesis might have to be the one to save them all.

In Out of Spite, Out of Mind, our fearless wizards discover the biggest glitch in their world's program may well be themselves.

©2018 Scott Meyer (P)2018 Audible Originals, LLC.

Scott, how do you think women are supposed to act?

Seriously, though. Gwen? She's angry until suddenly without context she's not and all Martin does is be honest and forthright with her. The Brits? They're normal until Philip tries his best to save them all and has to keep things from them/her. All be ever did was his very best to help and was forced to lie. The resolution is deeply unfair and unsatisfying on all sides and NOBODY else in the cast calls out Brit for being a bitch or being irrational. Honestly, this would have been a better resolution if Brit had died. The book is a slow, downhill slide into yet another unsatisfying resolution and a little lead in to another story where I'm sure it will be yet another downhill slide into mediocrity. Scott, please. You can do better than this. the first book proved that. your characters have gone from goofy and lovable to increasingly one dimensional and rigid.

A Philip to Remember / A Britt To Forget

**MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!**

I adore the Magic 2.0 series - I fell in love with the world, the characters and their adventures through medieval England, Atlantis, and the rest. Luke Daniels is an absolute wizard in bringing these characters to life, and I applaud Scott Meyers for never resting on his laurels, and taking chances with books 3 (fun!), 4 (Honor fail) and 5.

With Out of Spite, Out of Mind, the Phillip//Britt pairing is the main event, representing fatalism vs. free will. And that's interesting! Where it quickly falls apart is 1) how condescending (at best) and spiteful (hence the title???) Britt becomes and 2) how idiotic she behaves. It's the second part that I take issue with Meyer, because Britt was a pretty awesome character until recently.

So, to recap: Britt is two people; younger Britt resents older Britt; elder Britt notices a glitch caused by the two co-existing; elder Britt enlists Phillip to help her solve the problem and keep it a secret from Phillip, lest they destroy everyone/everything; younger Britt finds out and accuses Phillip of cheating on him; not-so-young Britt "saves the day" by fixing elder Britt, but not before encoding fake memories of Phillip cheating on her, thereby preserving the time loop and fulfilling her (elder Britt's) destiny of not being with Phillip.

To my first point, the characters in the book show little to no sympathy toward Phillip, with the main character Martin being unhelpful at best. Britt absolutely brutalizes Phillip, accusing him of cheating (with herself???) and then implanting her future self with false memories to ensure this becomes elder Britt's reality. How horrific. How sadistic.

But the fact that Phillip is posterized by Britt is a quibble compared to point numero dos - Britt's logic is completely faulty. If she allows herself to love Phillip, believing in HIS idea that free will exists (that each person can make decisions independently), and that determinism is false, she completely screws the pooch by essentially acting toward self-sabotage and preserving the timeline (i.e., free will doesn't exist, so I'm just going to do what I was going to do anyway).

Do you see the problem there? The Brit I know is way, way smarter than that. She is essentially acting OUT OF CHARACTER to push this plot forward. Phillip is not collaborating with elder Brit to save elder Brit - he is, at the end of the day, trying desperately to save younger Brit. Younger Brit somehow interprets this to be tantamount to cheating, and then acts to ensure the miserable outcome that is this book, which doesn't really prove her point (that what will be will be) since she ultimately decided the resolution of elder Brit's fate. And decides to cover her tracks by erasing the truth and replacing it with a falsehood about Phillip's infidelity...uhhh, good job Brit!

I can see where this is all going, but it just pains me when characters act of our character in order for the plot to work in certain ways. Gwen is no charmer, either, and I'm puzzled at how little chemistry both couples have with one another. Mr. Meyer - most of us are ride-or-die fans, and we're too invested to give up on these characters. I'm certain that Phillip and to a lesser extent Martin will get their comeuppance (for essentially being good, normal guys), but the fact that I'm expecting this comeuppance against the loves of their lives is really weird, mean-spirited, bizarre, out of character, etc.

Thank you for taking some chances, and taking us to some unexplored territory, but please hide the puppet strings a bit better when having the characters do what they need to do in service of the entire story. Characters by their nature are in service to the story, but maybe the story should be in service to them, as well (ooh! story/determinism vs. character/free will!)

Dont Bother

Small spoilers ahead:
Rather than listen to this, just read the last chapter and move on. It's literally the only thing that adds to the plot. Everything else in the story adds nothing and destroys any depth that anyone but Philip had. Outside of a few funny side-stories, the main story is literally just Brit ruining Philip's life because a future version of her did it to her; so, she has to do it because.... idk... no free will? That's it. That's her only reasoning, and everyone aside from Philip seems to accept this as a valid argument. Don't waste your money. Absolutely no development or growth here.

Props to the narrator, though. 10/10

Huge Spoilers after:

Philip listens to Old Brit when she tells him not to tell young Brit about what was going in with Old Brit FOR HER OWN SAFETY. Young Brit (despite believing she will one day be old Brit) decides that it's all Philip's fault for listening to old Brit and he should have ignored Old Brit's warning and told her. She breaks up with him, and to top it off she changes her own memories of the events to believe that Philip cheated on her; so, that way she'll never forgive him.... for trying to protect her(?). That's it. that's the entire plot, and EVERYONE sides with Brit. No one even questions it. Like... come on. What an awful story. How could anyone honestly believe she's in the right. What a completely garbage human being.
Complete letdown. Was really hoping the cliffhanger from Book 4 actually meant something, butttt.... NOPE

Not what I was hoping for.

Excellent narration by Luke Daniels as always.

This book in the series was not as light hearted and fun as the previous books.

Seeing the cover (honestly, I didn’t even read the synopsis before buying it - Magic 2.0 books are an auto buy for me) - I was expecting some fun interactions with many multiple versions of Brit.
Yes, there were multiple versions of Brit interacting together, but it wasn’t fun. Snooty, bitchy, grumpy... but not fun.

We know from previous books that future Brit and and future Philip are not a couple, but this is the book we find out why...... and well, Brit is a spiteful bitch.

Sounds like the next book should be interesting from the way this one ended. I just hope Mr. Meyer’s gives Philip a better happier storyline than what it looks like the future holds for him.

Looking forward to book 6 !

Don't read this one.

The title of this book describes Brits motivation and mental status perfectly. Seriously, if you have any love for these characters then do not listen to this book at all. Just pretend there was no foreshadowing problem at the end of the last book, and that all of the characters continue to live their lives the in their goofy but charming way. You'll be much happier.

This Series has Taken a Horrible Turn...

I'm going to keep this brief... I loved this series so much. I couldn't stop listening to it and told everyone I knew about it. After this last book I completely regret it.

The way Phillip was treated in this book was absolutely disgusting and uncalled for. Everyone was completely ok with Phillip being destroyed over a lie that Brit put in her own head. Why do the other characters support this? Phillip has consistently throughout these books been there for everyone and they just turn their back on him just because. All the build up to find out why Brit and Phillip aren't together in the future and this is what the author chose? Unbelievable.

Also, the not so subtle "Women are amazing and Men are animals" thread of this book was forced and complete garbage. "Women need an excuse to fight and men need an excuse not to fight"? Who the hell thinks like this let alone writes it down and promotes it to others?!

Killed the series for me. Horrible.

A nonsensically funny story becomes nonsense

By the end of the story, Scott Meyer has taken his goofy and likable cast of characters and reduced them to one-dimensional cardboard cutouts of sheep. He strips them of any sense of depth, uniqueness, or meaning. If you have enjoyed the series for it’s sense of fraternal camaraderie, hijinx, and sophomoric charm set within a world built on an intriguing mystery, stop before this book. He ruined every good thing about the series in the latter half of this disaster. I think he was collecting a paycheck he didn’t fully earn.

Brit is a sedistic monster.

The amount of damage she inflicts on others and the univers is amazing. She's good enough to be a Lovecraft monster. Yet she gets away with it all.

Disappointing

This book was like a dog turd on a golf course. I feel like the author was going for a Empire Strikes Back feel and ended up with an unhappy ending and a big screw you to a couple main characters, turning one into a putz and the other into a villian.

The title is the story.

Kind of defeats the feminist bent of the overall series by writing a story where a woman is so ruled by emotion she almost glitches the universe into oblivion just because her boyfriend secretly talked to other women (I don't think that's a spoiler).

I don't know, I enjoy the series but I wish the author wouldn't write every single character as if they're complete morons.

Better than 4 not as good as 1,2 or 3.

SoI love these books - just going to say that first. They are all great in there own ways.

For me books 1 and 2 were really well done and book 3 was a smart way to incorporate new/old people in to the mix, book 4 was the odd one out but book 5 does tie in to it.

The entire book just felt very angry and shouty, they are all friends but just constantly shout at each other like they hate each other. Im starting to get sick of gwen and her constantly beating martin up (so to speak), i dont really get what he sees in her!

The Brits stuff got even more silly and complicated and found myself thinking when is this going to end. Some parts of the stroy just felt they were there for the sake of being there and did feel like they dragged on.

Having said all that, the last 5/6 chapters were funny and a bit more mystic as per the first books and i really enjoyed that, i am excited for the next set of books based on the end, but i did see the plot twist coming. (still a good twist)

There are some really laugh out loud parts of the story and some really silly parts that make it a magic 2.0 book. I think the references to more modern day stuff got a little out of in some places but thats no biggie! As per usual Luke does a fantastic job with the story telling and plays the parts very well, he is 50% of the reasons for coming back.

Scott did a great job on make another fun adventure to the series and i am still very much a fan and eager to listen to the next one.

For me this was very much make or break based on the last book, and currently i feel like its a make.. but just.

My advice is, if you have a credit and you like the series it wont feel like a waste of a credit. its still fun and part of the series, its anther silly adventure that gets out of hand and thats great. Like what i said about the last book, not sure i would pay full price to listen to this.

I loved 1,2 and 3 and kind of enjoyed 4.But...

... this was by far the weakest so far.

The idea of getting to know more about the world really had me interested. But by the second half I had given up any hope and realised that this was nothing more than a weak, character destroying, overly exaggerated and at sometimes quite sexist story.

The performance however, as always, was amazing.

And the ending to the last one seemed so promising

There are various tropes in books after years of reading Fantasy that I have honestly begun to annoy me when they come up but the two I generally dislike the most are

You Can't Fight Fate and Idiot Ball (This series is awash with other tropes but these two I feel I have to mention)

You can't fight fate is kind self-explanatory. The character is either given a vague, cryptic or even direct message of the future and despite what the characters do, it happens. Now I knew from the earlier books this was a major theme in the story. But the funny characters and scenarios were good enough to override that... but the ending to the last story gave me hope. It suggested that actually.... there was a difference. There was some small anomaly that could finally become, after a full book covering the plot, lead to there being free will... but no. The entire book is formed on the entire idea that there is no free will. That in one scenario the characters will in fact go to great lengths, spend days upon days of practise and effort to re-enact a fight scene they saw their future selves do, for no actual reason then because they believe they have to do it. They put physical effort into making sure fate is right even when they actively don't want it to happen.

Idiot Ball is when smart characters do and say seemingly stupid things. This is so common in this book it is painful. Every attempt to by one character to describe something to another character seems just painfully worded enough to lead to some incident, either for humour or for plot. Every time the characters say "I'm going to change the past or future" and sit back screaming internally at the pages going "WHY?! YOU KNOW THAT WON'T WORK!!"

This book is stuffed to bits with these tropes, over and over.... and finally... the last big event with Brit and Phillip is downright horrible.

I don't know why Scott Meyer decided to right this scenario out, but... well.

To summarise, Philip at the start of the book is asked by Brit the Elder to help her cure a glitch she has. She threatens Philip with "If you tell my younger self, the universe will implode". He believes her but makes it clear over and over that he hates hiding things from younger Brit but in secret, goes to the future to help figure out what is causing the glitch.

That is what Philip did.... I won't even bother explaining all the arguments and speeches after Brit the younger finds out the truth, but in the end... she refuses to let Philip apologies and re-writes her's and every other version of herselves own memories so they all believe Philip did in fact cheat on her... and they even say, after the mind wipe, that they have forgiven him but not really, even in the long distant future.

I won't go into how immoral and cruel that is, to take a single, very debatable mistake and explode it into a literal "I hate you and I will make up an even worse scenario in my head to hate you for all time"...

.... but on the good side, I get the title now... very clever.

... I think I'm done with this series.

Absolutely rubbish!

Don’t be fooled by the positive reviews like I was. This series should have finished after the 3rd book. This story makes you hate all the characters buy the end of the book except Philip and Miller... that’s not a spoiler don’t worry. Narrator was great as usual but story was irritatingly stupid. If you thought the dragons were bad this is worse!

The End of a Great Series

EDIT: Wow this review is bitter, I was clearly unhappy with it. I'm happy to report that on Book 6, the Vexed Generation, Scott Meyer managed to progress the story from this book, without ignoring what had happened, and it worked out quite well. I was initially worried that he had lost his edge - but the series did return back to 1-3 charm with the 6th book!

This might be a little spoiler-y, I'll try to minimise it as much as possible.

Not as weak story-wise as the 4th, but the worst novel of the bunch. Why?

A genuinely interesting logic hole was created at the end of the 4th, allowing for some truly interesting character developing and perhaps a chance to learn more about the mysterious program. No. Slammed shut with a really uninspired "you can't change what's going to happen!" approach. Which is fair enough, but out of the many, many times that showed up in the book, only one of those had a reasoning other than "it happened in the future, so we have to!" which is quite honestly the weakest way that the author could have done it.

You're telling me that nobody even considered not doing it, even when Philip, as established in previous books, would've insisted they didn't and would've told them to "SHUT UP" if they mentioned it?

The Brit sequence was massively overdone, way too complicated and full of the same ridiculousness as previously mentioned. I was hoping for it to end about halfway through. The author has managed to take one of the most interesting characters, completely dilute what made them interesting through repetition to the point where it's honestly just tedious and annoying, and then give a daft justification for a super-cruel act which just results in the reader REALLY disliking that character.

The point of this book seems just to make you dislike certain characters in order to drive drama that suddenly appeared out of nowhere. The previous 4 books established that the characters were smart (in their own way) and makes you able to expect what they'd say. This one throws that all out of the window with the "you can't change it!" and forces everyone to make really stupid decisions. Again, without justification.

There are some good laughs in here, like all the books, but they're so overshadowed by, just, well, the actual story itself.

The narrator, Luke Daniels, did a fantastic performance as always. Consistent (mostly) over five audiobooks, great voices and a lot of character. Great job.

Unsatisfying. (The ending is practically a Deus Ex Machina for crying out loud.) Unfun. There were so many options open to this series for more fun romps like 1-3, (4 was a bit dumb, quite filler-y, but it at least fit the core idea) but instead the author is more interested in writing a not-even-geeky-anymore reality show focused on the hollow corpses of the characters we've grown to love. I very much doubt that Meyer will be able to fix the damage done to this series with the next book.

Not great

Like others books 1-3 are excellent. 4 was a bit odd and this one just seemed to lose your faith in the characters. The fun and camaraderie are gone, it feels like a teenage angst book which I believe misses his audience of slightly geeky 40’s types :-) the storyline is tying its self in knots and creating paradox’s that don’t really help the story.
Female characters seem to become more stereotypical than ever without being funny.
luke Daniels is great as usual.
Personally I feel like the story line needs a CTRL ALT DELETE

Mostly good but infuriating at points

I liked the set-up and mystery in this and enjoyed most of the book, even having sympathy at one point for Brit the elder when she expresses distaste at the way she deels she has to act (up until then she always seemed to me unlikeable and unpleasant).

Then the end came.

Firstly it felt like a dissapointing cop-out and so much less interesting than it could have been and it undermined everything leading up to it.

Secondly (and for me the worst thing in the book), Brit makes a truly horrible and manipulative decision/action which almost all the other characters accept without pointing out how wrong it is, or calling her to account. It makes zero sense to me and I find the whole thing so infuriating, not only because it is terribly unjust to a good person, but because it makes me think less of almost all the other characters.

I found Brit (the elder) hard to take in book 2, and felt then it was weird that other characters were not judging her appalling behaviour but this book manages to take it up a notch. To be honest I have never understood how Brit the younger (who mostly seemed fine) could suddenly become someone who is so horrible, nor why anyone likes her when she does.

Despite enjoying most of the book I'm not sure if I can listen to any future magic 2.0 books as the end of this one made me so infuriated. In a way I wish I hadn't listened to this one, though mostly I just wish it had a different ending.

worst of the series

Ok, the author is definitely running out of ideas. Last book had a plot of "oops we made a mistake, we need to fix our mess". This book doesn't even have that! There was so much potential after the cliffhanger the last book was left on and it was squandered. sorry but I will have to say save your credit and stop at book 4.

Why?

I loved the previous books but this one for me missed to mark. I'm sure the writer believed he was being clever with the story line but it drones on with no real substantial point, so much so that I'm left feeling cheated. One of the best characters was treated with utter contempt as to just alianate the audiance. As for the 'plot twist' if you didn't have to guess at who the two assistants were defore the end of the book even told you. As for being friends with Martin's and Quen's enemy at the time of their wedding I'd be pleasantly surprised if it didn't turn out to be Phillip.

Please, God, let this be the last one

The first couple of books in this series were clever and funny, and had an engaging plot premise. That premise -- that what we perceive as life and reality is just a computer program -- was not original, but it was handled in an innovative way. The later books were also clever and funny but, frankly, less so; and the plot premise is getting stale now. The story reads as if the author is fed up with the characters, and just wants to get it all over with. I got the same impression when reading the last book in the Hitchhiker's Guide series -- but in that case Douglas Adams openly admitted that he was sick of the characters, and only wrote the book because of nagging from fans. In this book, however, the ending certainly suggests that there could be another one in the works -- Heaven help us.

The plot of Out of Spite is based on the paradoxical peculiarities of time travel. As the story unfolds, the situation gets increasingly complex and bizarre, with multiple instances of the same character in the same place at the same time. I honestly don't know if all the paradoxes resolve at the end, because I'd lost interest in following the plot by then.

Scott Meyer is a capable author, and his books deal with complex philosophical problems in a refreshingly witty way. I just think that this particular story vein has been mined out.

Luke Daniels' narration was excellent, as always.