When We Were Real by Daryl Gregory
Published 2025 · 464 pages · 120,000 words · about 8 hours at an average pace · Science Fiction, Literary Fiction, Speculative Fiction
How hard is When We Were Real to read?
When We Were Real scores 49 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 38 out of 100
- Contemporary American vocabulary with a light dusting of simulation-theory jargon — voxels, render limits, substrate — always explained through character banter. Gregory writes for clarity and wit, not lexical display; no dictionary required.
- Sentence structure: 34 out of 100
- Clean, dialogue-forward sentences in the tradition of accessible literary SF. Gregory favors short declaratives and comic timing over subordination; the prose moves at bus-tour speed.
- Abstraction: 62 out of 100
- The road-trip plot is concrete, but the book's real cargo is philosophy: free will, faith, and whether love means anything inside a simulation. Ideas ride shotgun the whole way, debated openly by nuns, engineers, and conspiracy theorists.
- Information density: 50 out of 100
- A large tour-bus ensemble, each with a backstory chapter, plus the rules and lore of the Impossibles. Rich but digestible — Gregory feeds the world-building through anecdote and argument rather than info-dumps.
- Narrative indirection: 44 out of 100
- Rotating close-third narration is honest with the reader, but several passengers are hiding who they are, and the simulators' intentions stay offstage. Clear storytelling with secrets and late reveals rather than unreliable narration.
- Symbolic density: 52 out of 100
- The Impossibles work as literal tourist stops and as metaphors — glitches standing in for grace, wonder, and mortality — while the Canterbury Tales frame turns the whole tour into a pilgrimage. The symbols are present but never obscure the story.
- Ironic distance: 48 out of 100
- Gregory satirizes influencer culture, conspiracy podcasting, and theology scrambling to absorb the Announcement, yet the emotional core — a dying man and his best friend — is played completely straight. Humor amid tragedy, not corrosive irony.
- Resolution withholding: 55 out of 100
- Character arcs land, but the biggest questions — who runs the simulation, why, and what the Impossibles mean — stay deliberately open. Closed plot, open metaphysics.
- Structural complexity: 55 out of 100
- A Canterbury Tales structure: the pilgrimage frame carries interpolated tales as the POV rotates through the tour group, chapter by chapter. Multiple threads, but the seven-day itinerary keeps them easy to track.
How When We Were Real is regarded
When We Were Real holds a literary regard score of 42 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.