The description gives it all away. [The Augmented Man by Joseph Carrabis]

This was the third book I'd downloaded from NetGalley. I'm still working on the second book which I had downloaded on the same day, but maybe because of the tedium I've suffered through to finish this book this feels like its the book I've had longer? And back in October when I'd downloaded it I'd started this post, erroneously thinking I'd be finished with the book soon after I'd started. I'd written some quotes and early thoughts down for fear of losing them later:

• "Aryan, Donaldson thought. Rivers is what Hitler wanted his master race to be." Tonally, something I didn't expect to read in only the second chapter of the book. Random and jarring, but okay.
• "Broken glass and beer cans mated on the floor." Bruh, what? 
• Why is this book so wordy? 

I can't say much changed. It just got weirder. Bison and bunnies were a theme for a while. Perspective shifts and character references were so unclear. The text was wordy and needlessly obfuscated by would-be military jargon and acronyms. Towards the end of my read I was skimming over paragraphs, isolating dialogue, because there were endless masses of technical names of weapons and fictional setting markers. But then I also found myself thinking it should be longer. There were jumps in the building and mending of relationships that should have been slowly fleshed out and developed. At the same time, so many characters were introduced and the narrative felt crowded.

The NetGalley book description starts off with "sci-fi military thriller" and that's where I went wrong. I've learned my lesson, never again. The military thriller genre is not for me. I have no military background, and I don't assume this is part of an existing series of books, so for me this book went a bit too detailed with would-be military speak and terminology while simultaneously trying an indirect world-build and it didn't succeed. Taking all of that away, there's a semblance of a plot. A supersoldier wants to be killed because the government who experimented on him, but then at the last minute there's a new conflict with a new generation supersoldier...to cover up the program? Or because someone wants to get back in power? Or is it because the powers that be want a conflict to see which supersoldier is better? I don't know, and the fact that it's not clear says enough. 

As it stands there's no one I can see enjoying this book. Whether that's because of the limits of my social circle or, and possibly and, because of limits of the text and weak plot, who can say. I'm not going to recommend this book and I didn't really enjoy my read of it. But it wasn't anything so horrendously egregious for me to give it a one star. So The Augmented Man gets a 2-stars from me.