Dot Monster Re:Volution (Part 1 - Introduction)
Hello, all. Welcome to our first review series of Sunday mini-reviews - one that was honestly a bit painful for me to write.
Dot Monster Re:Volution is a novel written by CJ Van, also known as TheDigiknow, a YouTuber whose videos I’ve seen once or twice. I first became aware of it when he mentioned on his Twitter that he’d published a novel as a love letter to the Digimon franchise. Given that Digimon has immense emotional value to me, I was intrigued.
And you know what? Van kept his promise. Dot Monster Re:Volution shows immense passion and understanding for Digimon. He’s changed enough things to avoid copyright issues, but it’s still clear what the different elements of his story are supposed to reflect or reference. These elements aren’t just slapped on haphazardly, either. Oh, there’s the odd memberberry here or there that made me roll my eyes, but by and large, this book reads like a heartfelt and well-considered attempt to create a new entry within the Digimon franchise. If this book were the story treatment for a new Digimon anime, I would very much want to watch it.
However … this is not a story treatment for a TV show. It is a novel. And as novels go, I simply can’t deny that Dot Monster Re: Volution is a very bad book. Not as bad as my initial Twitter post about this book indicated, perhaps, but still nowhere near good.
Much like The Queen of Vorn, this is a story that mostly works on a conceptual level but is mangled by the delivery. Questionable decisions made with the plot and worldbuilding mangle the stakes and ruin the tension. The characters are too shallow to sustain the various character moments that are supposed to be significant and impactful. The prose is a nightmare insofar as Show vs. Tell is concerned, not to mention having enough errors to convince me that it never saw an editor.
As much as I’d like to focus on the positives if this book, I have to adhere to my own standards. These are severe issues here that need more than just saying, “This is bad,” to properly convey. This review therefore will be a rather brutal dissection.
Normally, I’d punch said dissection out as a one-shot review and be done with it. However, seeing as how I have a massive backlog on Fridays as it is, I thought I’d do something experimental here. I’m going to take the one-shot and split it into six mini-reviews across Sundays. Each will focus on one specific aspect of the story, allowing me to spotlight the core problems in each one. The planned schedule looks something like this:
October 5th (Today) - Overview of basic information
October 12th - Plot, including how the prologue kicks the legs out from under the framing of the antagonists by providing a different understanding of the stakes of the story
October 19th - Characters, including how the shallow characterization undermines pivotal beats
October 26th - Worldbuilding, including how the bizarre choice of how the divide between real and virtual worlds was handled drained away the tension from important scenes
November 2nd - Prose, with emphasis on the Show vs. Tell violations. We’ll also use this time to touch on the theme
November 9th - Having done my due diligence in analyzing the problems with this book’s writing, I will indulge in (mostly) unrestrained praise for how this book succeeds as a love letter to the Digimon franchise
All right. Let’s get to it.
STATS
Title: Dot Monster Re:Volution
Series: N/A
Author(s): CJ Van
Genre: Science Fiction
First Printing: December 2024
Publisher: Self-published through Amazon
SPOILER WARNING
Mild spoilers for Dot Monster Re:Volution will be included throughout this review, through I will keep the first paragraph of each section as spoiler-free as possible. Heavy spoilers will be confined to clearly labelled sections.
Additionally, it will be necessary to discuss the Digimon franchise at multiple points throughout this review. You can expect heavy, unmarked spoilers for any Digimon media released prior to October 2025. Regarding Digimon Beatbreak (the first episode of which premieres today), I will not be providing any spoilers from the anime itself, though I may provide mild spoilers based upon information that is available in promotional materials.
PREMISE
From the Amazon product page:
In the wake of a historic cyber attack in the late 2020s, a governing body was formed to construct and police the successor to the world wide web. On this second internet, 98% of users are accompanied by sophisticated ‘Partner Programs’ called Dot Monsters.
When a group of teenagers discover a dark secret about the Dot Monster origins, they wage war against the makers of the new internet, to liberate humans and monsters alike.
Dot Monster ReVolution is an original piece of fiction. It is a love letter to the monster taming anime and games of the late 90s and early 2000s.
Reaction
This premise in on-point. The simple promises that are made are kept.
RATING: 2/10
This book was honestly painful to read. I had to force myself to stay up late and choke down the last third in a single night, because I knew I’d never muster the willpower to finish it otherwise.
In concept, Dot Monster Re:Volution should work. What weaknesses it has could have been leveraged into strengths with just a slight reworking of the text. As we go over the main issues with this book in the coming weeks, I will try to propose how these problems could have been turned around.
As it is, these weaknesses are still weaknesses that survived to the finished product. No matter how much I love what Van was trying to do here, I can’t deny that said finished product is amateurish at best. This book is a perfect example of why I stopped reading indies back in the 2010s.
Speaking of those weaknesses, I believe that all of the problems in this book can be boiled down to five key issues, which we’ll cover over the next four weeks:
Plot - The prologue establishes an existential threat, then the bulk of the narrative ignores that threat, making the effort to frame the antagonists as villains come across as demonization.
Character - The Dot Monsters thmselves are not characters, and none of the humans have any more depth than the accessories in The Empyrean. As a result, when the narrative tries to wring emotional stakes out of character struggles, it falls flat.
Worldbuilding - The manner by which the human characters interface with the Internet is nonsensical on the face of it and also undermines the tension any time there’s supposed to be peril.
Prose - This book has zero subtlety regarding character emotions or motivations, Telling the audience everything rather than allowing us to experience things with the characters.
Theme - Dot Monster Re:Volution seems to be attempting some commentary about Internet freedom. By itself, I don’t think this is handled terribly. However, much like the handling of goblin genocide in The Queen of Vorn, other elements in the story conspire to create a story that mainly proves the anti-theme.
CONTENT WARNING
I include this section purely for the sake of consistency, as there really isn’t anything noteworthy here. There are some scenes where Dot Monsters bleed, a short arc about mean comments from anonymous strangers online, and some tiptoeing around Dot Monster death. That’s about it.
AGE DEMOGRAPHICS
Digimon was originally a franchise aimed at children, and I’d be hard-pressed to argue it doesn’t still target a younger audience. However, there has been a lot of content over the years to cater to the aging members of the original fanbase. Since Van did not categorize this book for Middle Grade or Young Adult on Amazon, I will treat this novel as I would any other intended for adult audiences. The closest I’ll come to extending some grace will be when we come to Themes, for reasons I will cover then.
GATEWAY OPENED
All right, that’s a wrap for this week. Please join us next Sunday, October 12th, as we dive into the plot.
Thank you all for stopping by this week. Please subscribe if you’d like to receive the weekly newsletter, and please share this review with others if you liked it. Take care, everyone, and have a good week.
