Digital Publishing
Online published between June 2011 and November 2013, Worm is made known to the world wide web as a serial novel written by John “Wildbow” McCrae. This science-fiction novel has a total number of 1,680,000 words contained in seven thousand pages. It features a browbeaten teenage girl named Taylor Hebert, who possesses bizarre powers to control worms, insects, and other small lifeforms. After the novel is published online, it is continuously being edited by McCrae until now and plans to produce the novel thru an ebook and physical book using traditional publishing.
The Idea of the Storyline and Plot
The story begins with a timid teenage girl with strange powers. Taylor regularly goes outside her home, disguising herself as a fictional character. She wants to be free from a deep emotional wound that has affected her for the past years and never-ending frustration with civilian life. Seeing a supervillain in action, Taylor attempted to take down the enemy but surprisingly mistaken her for being a villain herself by the public. This led her to conflict with local authorities, mercenaries, and confusing morals within the society while risking her life to face this predicament.
The novel, titled Worm, is divided into several story developments that contain five to sixteen chapters for each development. For each story development, side stories or interludes are inserted. This is to promote stories from different standpoints and provide a backstory that readers wouldn’t get directly from Taylor’s point of view. Other side stories were included throughout the development of the story, or once every donation goal has been reached to entice readers with additional interludes. However, some critics are not in favor of the additional side stories since these usually derail readers out of the main story and can be confusing to some.
Worm readers must be warned that despite the hero of the story could be considered a fictional character with superpowers, the story is equally dark as the story develops, and it will only get darker as you continue on every chapter. One concern here is that morality is not well-identified as black or white. Innocent readers might be affected seeing the progress of the story without a clear label for good and bad. In addition to this, Taylor and her companions are not invincible, which means anything could happen in the story, including unexpected deaths.
Disclaimer to Readers
The heroes of the story do not wage war against the evil forces. Instead, they are neither winning nor losing the war between right and wrong. And their superpowers do not save the day or benefit society. So, if you are sensitive to morality matters, this kind of plot might disinterest you.
While just focusing on the main hero, Taylor would seem to be emotionally depressed, disappointed with everyday social life while simply hanging by a thread even from the start of the story. Readers would even call their fandom Wormverse and are all hooked up with the entire story. Even though the plot of the novel includes a regular display of violence that is neither used for good nor bad, explicit use of language throughout the storyline and casual sex activities happen from time to time.
With these initial warnings, readers like you should take precautionary measures first before indulging yourself in this kind of novel. Some perspectives in the story might affect fair judgment in terms of morality since it is not well-labeled. This is especially true with young readers who cannot discern right and wrong, while the hero of the story would end her day doing twisted or seemingly bad actions.
Nevertheless, the main objective of the hero is to make the world a better and safer place together with her friends, family, and herself. It is just that her means do not justify her goals, which could be the flavor of the entire storyline of the novel.
In general
The story can be nailed with old enough readers who can easily accept the story as a simple plot of the novel and not as life’s guiding principles. Although there are young readers who can handle twisted plots such as this, and there are also adult readers who cannot. But what’s important is, readers should be mature enough to handle the twisted, dark, yet ingenuity novel Worm.