Illusion Of Sanity

I finished Frost’s new book A Generation of Men yesterday. It was a fairly quick read. I think it occupied around 2.5 hours of my time throughout the day, while running errands and drinking. Here are my thoughts.

Overall, this was a decent book. I wish I could say it was a great book, or an excellent book, but I cannot. The entire novel has to be taken into consideration, and because of that it can only achieve a status of decent. Overall: 3 Stars.

The story follows three men. In Manosphere terms, they would be a “natural” Alpha, a high Beta, and a pathetic Omega who spends his time playing World of Warcraft. The Natural gets laid like tile, passes his college classes with little to no effort, and attempts to instruct the high Beta in the ways of women. The Omega works part time at a shitty electronics store and plays video games for 14 hours a day while eating junk food.

Just read what I just wrote and skip the first 15 pages of the book. You will enjoy it a lot more.

The reason I disliked the beginning of the book….is somewhat hard to explain, off the top of my head. As a writer myself, I understand what happened. Starting a book is the hardest thing in the world. You finally just have to force yourself to start typing and get into the groove, just to produce something.

There are way too many “motherfuckers” and “faggot”s at the start of the story, in the dialogue of the college students. Frost was just trying to establish identities and get things rolling, but it really jarred me out of the narrative when every sentence was “Fuck you, motherfucker, you’re just a faggot who can’t get girls” etc. I have no intention of this being a negative review, so I will only say that about the first dozen or so pages.

Moving on to the middle of the book….this is where things get good. All of the protagonists discover the Manoshpere. I haven’t read every book written by Manosphere authors, but I intend to. So far this is the first book I have read that discusses the ‘sphere, although Frost never comes out and uses the word “Manosphere”. He just mentions “a collection of blogs and books about picking up women, working out, feminism,etc”. I wish he would have actually used the word, but we can’t have it all.

The Omega male (Nick) finally turns off the computer and starts trying to eat healthy and work out. The high Beta (Ian) realizes that he is doing everything wrong by putting women on pedestals. Nothing changes for the Natural. It’s all really interesting, and it’s obvious that Frost has been in the positions of both the Beta and Omega. The middle of the book is absolutely awesome, and you will be cheering Nick and Ian along as they try to become better men.

I have never encountered a better look into the minds of the average “lower males” than what the author gives us with A Generation of Men. You really come to understand what is going on in the mind of an obsessive WoW player and a guy who thinks women are angels. The way Ian deals with women in his life will make you wince and cringe as he sends text after text to a girl who hasn’t responded. It’s just painful. But oh so true, for too many men.

The ending really hits home. You see what happens when a man is abused by society and marginalized his whole life and runs out of options. The ending really hit home with me, on multiple levels. There was a time in my life when I was the nerdy kid who got pickled on all the time, and there was a time in my life when I was the good looking, intelligent guy who just didn’t know how to deal with women. So the culmination of all the stories represent ways my own life could have gone. Perhaps this is why it was so moving for me. I don’t want to spoil the ending, but it’s intense.

So, discounting the rough start, I would give this book 4.5 stars. A great novel, a fun quick read, and you will laugh out loud at some points, cringe at others. Frost really speaks to the average male in this novel. I cannot link it at the moment because I am blogging from my estate in bum fucked nowhere with only a cel connection, but I will post the relevant links tomorrow. Check out the book, it’s more than worth the time.

-Dr. Illusion