Ultra 85
Book Details
Author: Logic
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Genre: Science-Fiction
Pages: 286
Plot: 3.5/5
Writing quality: 3/5
Strength of characters: 3/5
Book Review (No Spoilers)
Sir Robert Bryson Hall II, better known by his stage name Logic, sprang to the forefront of hip-hop culture in 2014 with his debut album Under Pressure. I vividly remember the days when this album was released, listening to it on repeat on the bus on my way to school, playing Call of Duty with my friends, and just sitting around with nothing else to do but listen to music. Little did I know at the time, Logic would become one of the most prolific hip-hop artists of the decade, dropping a new album or mixtape every year, if not every few months. It’s no surprise then that someone with such a deep passion for art and storytelling would find his way to writing. Ultra 85, in addition to being Logic’s third book accompanying 2019’s Supermarket and 2021’s This Bright Future: A Memoir, is a major event for longtime fans because it has long been the rapper’s white whale of sorts.
To understand the context that makes the mere release of this book so unique, one must take a trip through Logic’s music catalog. In 2015, Logic released his sophomore album, The Incredible True Story, a concept album set in the near future about two men, Thomas and Kai, who are on an expedition from the space station Babel, the last bastion of humanity, following the downfall of Earth, to find the planet Paradise. All of the album tracks have sci-fi themes, and the tracks are interspersed with scenes from the two traveler’s trip through space, finding abandoned ships, talking about pop culture, and listening to the same album as the listener. The album was well received with a Metacritic score of 75.
Fast forward two years, and Logic releases his next full-length album Everybody. In addition to hosting the radio hit 1-800-273-8255, his most well recognized song, the album picks up the story of Thomas and Kai as they explore Paradise, having completed the journey they started in The Incredible True Story. It is also at this point that Logic teases Ultra 85, hiding the announcement of the album in the Everybody album booklet purchased by customers. However, Logic continued releasing several albums and mixtapes, some referencing the adventures of Thomas and Kai, but Ultra 85 never seemed to come to fruition until this past summer, when the rapper released the album as an independent artist and announced the release of the book with the same title.
In my opinion, the book is best enjoyed if the reader has first listened to Logic’s albums The Incredible True Story, and Ultra 85. The latter acts as a prequel to the former, and while the book retcons some lore from the albums, the core aspects of the story are the same. Now, onto the book.
Plot: 3.5/5
Ultra 85 follows the story of Captain Quentin Thomas and Private William Kai as they fly through space on a resource expedition in their ship, the Aquarius III. The two space marines are residents of the space station Babel, which is the home of humanity after a nuclear war made the Earth uninhabitable for humans. The Ultra 85, a group of 85 distinct families who saved humanity from extinction live on the planet Paradise, a dwarf planet that cannot support the millions of people on Babel. Only a select few Babel residents are chosen to move to Paradise each year, and the location of the planet is kept secret to protect it from unscrupulous potential settles. The plot thickens when Thomas and Kai happen to fall into a wormhole, placing them in the same system as Paradise, where they learn that their utopia is not all that they imagined.
At first glance, the plot is actually quite intriguing. For me, it fails in its execution. Logic is well known for being a movie savant, so it’s not surprising that the book progresses like a movie, with significant advances in the plot occurring in only a sentence or two, similar to how a movie might change scenes. This does make for a very fast-paced read (I read through the full book in only three days), but it also leaves some things to be desired in the overall development of the world that I think could have given the plot that extra half-point.
Writing Quality: 2/5
I struggle with appreciating Logic’s writing’s unique voice and feeling like he overdid it. On the one hand, Logic writes in a modern urban voice. Slang is common within the characters’ dialogue, and you would be forgiven for thinking you’re reading the script for Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming sci-fi action movie. I actually enjoyed this divergence from the traditional sci-fi writing conventions. It’s a great contrast to the style of dialogue you experience in Pierce Brown’s Red Rising, which is essentially neo-roman, and in some ways, it feels a bit more authentic to what people living in space in 2115 would sound like. Another aspect of the writing I enjoyed was Logic’s references to his music. Many lines in the book are just slightly adapted lyrics or lines from The Incredible True Story that serve as fun easter eggs for longtime listeners. If you are a Logic fan, you’ll find much to enjoy in the book.
On the other hand, Logic’s love of movies comes on a bit too strong within the text. Nearly every other line of dialogue between the characters is a quote from a movie, and there are two pages of the book that are just the characters quoting movie lines. Movies and pop culture do play a significant role in the character’s backstory and end up driving the plot as the book progresses. That said, there is a fine line between enhancing your writing with clever pop culture callbacks and being campy, and Logic crosses that line by a fair margin. The constant stream of references also dilutes the creativity of the plot by taking so much potential originality out of the text. If Logic could take about 50% of the movie quotes out of the book, I think it would be much better.
Strength of Characters: 3/5
A good book lives and dies by the strength of its characters. What are their motivations? What are their struggles? Why should I care about them? Logic does a good job of developing characters that the reader will care about, though some of them feel a bit shallow. Quentin Thomas narrates the book itself, so the reader gets a deep look into his backstory and motivations. We see the story of a dyed in the wool patriot to his cause slowly lose faith in what he believes in, and this is all very well fleshed out. However, the supporting characters lack that depth. The primary hardship for Thomas’s faithful sidekick, Private William Kai, is that his girlfriend left him to live on paradise. Other characters have stronger backstories and motivations, but I had a very hard time feeling deep connections to anyone in the story.
The villains of the story are also paper-thin, which is a pet peeve of mine in writing. I have a hard time getting interested in a story where the bad guys are written to be the epitome of evil with no redeeming qualities. In this book, the villains are largely faceless and don’t even have much of a backstory to speak of beyond a few sentences of exposition sprinkled in every few chapters. I think that it was an exciting opportunity for world building that was missed, but I’m not going to complain too much since I still enjoyed the book overall.
Final Verdict
Ultra 85 is an exciting and fast-paced books that both fans of Logic and movie lovers will enjoy. The traditional sci-fi fan may find the book lacking; however, I would argue this book wasn’t written for them. Ultra 85 is a celebration for fans who have followed the rapper from his initial mixtapes to his most recent album and have viewed the story of Thomas and Kai as something that would never exist outside of a few album skits. Read the book with this in mind, and I think you will have a good time.