Eh it starts off good, but then it delves too much into the love story between some scientist and her partner and then goes on a wild tangent related to forgotten members still existing as ghosts in the system.
It makes the same mistake Steven King did when writing the Dark Tower; it over-explains the mystery and intrigue that made the initial story (The Gunslinger) so compelling, and leans too much on its characters to carry the story.
I say the same thing about the SCP antimeme, as I say to Dark Tower readers: Read the first story, skip the rest or treat them as unrelated fanfics.
I thought the ghosts were the strongest part because it showed the story had the confidence to continue introducing new crazier ideas, and that one was particularly crazy but still fit into the SCP world. Sort of like why people liked Three Body Problem.
The weakest parts are when it focuses too much on the antagonist, where it tends to forget the actual definition of 3125 and just makes it something/someone that causes the world to end in random wacky crazy ways.
When it gets post-apocalyptic the writing also tends to forget how travel times and geography work. (Pretty common problem with old SF, where you'd go to a "planet" and there are like, 3 people who live on the planet. In this case the remaining living protagonist somehow manages to walk between very far places on his own without needing food and such.)
I disagree, this whole new plane of existence (basically heaven) was introduced out of nothing, without anything previously in the book hinting that something like that exists in this universe.
Tbh it felt like the author had written himself into a corner and made this up ad-hoc as a way to keep the story going.
It felt like a tie-in to some other thread in SCP canon, TBH. It's a pretty chaotic mix of ideas and stories, so it's something that fits but might have well been written by someone else in some other part of the wiki (chasing all of these is a time sink and a half, almost as bad as tvtropes)
I'd say (agree?) that the 2nd half (roughly) of the book is much worse but IMO still worth reading the whole thing. The concept is really novel (at least it was for me) and so engaging with it can still be fun.
It feels like overly forced sequel. "Your Last First Day" have definite ending, but then "Five Five Five Five Five" brings ghosts in order to have story with happy-end.
The new version is removing the SCP universe integration, so I assume the subplot with the ghosts (a crossover with another SCP story during serialization) will be changed.
The SCP universe is what made the antimemetics so unique though - that you had an entire forgotten department, doing heavy lifting Slow Horses style, keeping the whole operation running.
It's important because SCP is important, i.e. it borrows its greatness from the success of the normal day-to-day SCP operations.
Without it, it's just a story about amnesia at a government facility, and those kind of books are a dime a dozen.
It makes the same mistake Steven King did when writing the Dark Tower; it over-explains the mystery and intrigue that made the initial story (The Gunslinger) so compelling, and leans too much on its characters to carry the story.
I say the same thing about the SCP antimeme, as I say to Dark Tower readers: Read the first story, skip the rest or treat them as unrelated fanfics.