Worm is a web-published serial novel, written by wildbow. It is avaialble here.

First, a few disclaimers: I didn't read the whole thing. I read to arc nine (88 chapters), which I think gives me plenty enough to critique the work, but it is possible that things may change up after this point. Also, I am not a big superhero person, and as this story is primarily composed of an endless chain of superheroes duking it out, my review is tinged with a bit of battle fatigue; this is apparently not the usual response, and I admit that for the first 20 or so battles it was pretty cool.

In fact, if you like young adult fiction and superheroes, this story is definitely worth reading; you might also stop reading before the end (it is very long), but there are points where you can stop without feeling that you are ignoring too many open arcs.

However, I read this work only because it was said to be a good piece of rational fiction. A lot of trustworthy people told me this, repeatedly. They were wrong. They were wrong even given that 'rational fiction' is a very poorly defined genre, and even given that the people who define the genre also seem to view this work as rationalist fiction. So maybe I am wrong... but I can't see how. Let me explain, at length.

Oh, and from this point on, there are Spoilers.

The protagonist has a good backstory; once she discovered that she had a superpower she moved slowly, carefully making her costume out of super-strong materials, planning her arsenal, and filling a notebook with data on the exact scope of her power. Then, the story starts, and this all falls by the wayside.

She learns that certain mental and physical states appear to make her power stronger, and that certain drugs (anesthesia) have hinted at very significant gains in her power; she pretty much ignores this. Not just "I don't want to play around with drugs", but just completely ignores it -- no meditation, no concentration exercises, no practice.

Likewise, she knows that the edges of her power are fuzzy -- not only does she control bugs, but also crabs -- but even when fighting an underwater foe, she does not for a second think about crabs, shrimp, or other useful aquatic creatures. And yes, at that point a school of shrimp would have helped save lives. To be clear, we do not know that she hasn't already thought of shrimp etc., found that she cannot influence them, and so ignored them in the heat of battle. But the author does not tell us this, and gives us no reason to assume this.

She is given a free weapons upgrade by a mysterious benefactor. He will buy her pretty much anything she wants. She buys a billy club and a knife. This is explained away as her wanting to avoid anything lethal, but her teammate has just finished explaining how useful a taser is. Likewise, she has found pepper spray to be very useful, but does not consider an upgrade to a more powerful spray or a more powerful sprayer. Future chapters make it apparent that this is a matter of the author picking the weapons she needs for her plot, but that's not what we want from rationalist fiction.

She has a clear and actionable plan to manufacture armor, and ignores it. One of her friends gets hurt because she ignored her plan, so she continues to ignore her plan. Yes, she's busy. That doesn't excuse it.

And so it goes. Her shortfalls range from not telling her father some things that she probably should -- like, "I'm not dead" -- to not communicating clearly with other heroes, despite her being at risk for dying.

End spoilers.

And all of this is no worse than any other character in any other book. But that's the point -- a character that doesn't outperform the average simply does not qualify as a rationalist hero. I know, of course, that a lot of what I've read is foreshadowing, and at some point the protagonist will pick up some dropped threads, take a bit more control, and make some directed personal growth. But I just read the equivalent of four books consisting entirely of teenagers beating each-other up... I'm too rational to go for another four.