I love everything about this series, from the characters to the plot arc and character development to the world-building. Murderbot continues to be chI love everything about this series, from the characters to the plot arc and character development to the world-building. Murderbot continues to be charming despite all its attempts to convince itself that it doesn't care about humans. The human characters continue to be relatable and sympathetic. The corporations continue to be evil and corrupt. Just another day in the Murderbot verse.
In this novella, which is sort of the conclusion of the first general arc that spanned three other novellas, Murderbot is back to try and save Dr. Mensah from GrayCris Corp after GrayCris thinks that Mensah has potentially deadly information against their quest to clean up their public image after multiple scandals. I loved that we got to finally return to the Preservation team, since it was their relationship with Murderbot that hooked me into the series to begin with. I enjoyed Murderbot's other outings in Artificial Condition and Rogue Protocol, but I didn't care as much as I did in this novella because they were just random people who Murderbot met on its travels and not the first humans to find out about its hacked status and who treated Murderbot like just another crew member.
“I was having an emotion, and I hate that.�
The character development is off the charts in this series, but in this novella, readers can really see how Murderbot has grown over the last three novellas. It realizes how complex being a true person is and how sometimes, you care about people despite not wanting to. The cynical lens through which Murderbot views the world is constantly challenged, and that never quite changes, but those lens adapts.
“Possibly I was overthinking this. I do that; it’s the anxiety that comes with being a part-organic murderbot. The upside was paranoid attention to detail. The downside was also paranoid attention to detail.�
And of course, the plot itself is so fun and full of hijinks. There's a ton of action in this novella, almost to the point where you feel like you're running a marathon (okay, a half-marathon since this is such a short book) in order to keep up with everything going on. I had a bit of difficulty imagining some of the scenes in my mind's eye because everything was happening so fast and also because I couldn't quite get a good sense of how the space stations were laid out, but ultimately that wasn't really a big deal and I was still able to follow what was going on.
This could have made a good ending to the Murderbot series, but I am excited that there are so many more books/novellas for me to read and follow Murderbot on its adventures. I definitely hope all the side characters who I've come to adore (as has Murderbot, grudgingly) will be in those as well, since Murderbot's relationships are what really make it who it is becoming and developing into.
I liked this novella much more than the 2nd one in the series - in fact, it received one of my relatively-(but-not-as rare-as-they-used-to-be) five stI liked this novella much more than the 2nd one in the series - in fact, it received one of my relatively-(but-not-as rare-as-they-used-to-be) five star ratings! It had everything I loved, including abandoned buildings/space stations, protective Murderbots discovering emotions, some found family vibes, treachery, betrayal, and evil corporations. I also felt like this novella was much tighter in regards to plot than Artificial Condition (see my review here!) and also felt more relevant to Murderbot's overall story and journey. The story was definitely tense and got your heart pumping pretty early on, but Murderbot's snark and sarcastic observations while still being the most soft-hearted AI robot this side of the universe was a perfect blend with the tension in the plot. I just wanted to find out what would happen next to Murderbot and the rest of the people whom they teamed up with this time.
I also really loved the development that Murderbot went through in this novella. Well, I always love any development that characters go through, but his relationship with Miki was so significant for him. I also feel that the author is really good at making it clear how Murderbot is developing and becoming their own person without shoving it into her readers' faces. It makes us root for Murderbot more, especially as they conclude how important friendship and people are to them and also recognize that not all robots (like Miki) see humans as anything other than a friend. (view spoiler)[RIP Miki (hide spoiler)]
I'm super excited to see them meet up with their original team again and do what they need to do to keep their team safe from the evil organizations intent on wiping them out. Protective Murderbot is my favorite Murderbot!
�There needs to be an error code that means “I received your request but decided to ignore you.�
I was sort of torn on rating this novella because I did enjoy it, but I do think that I enjoyed it less than the first one. A big reason th3.75 stars!
I was sort of torn on rating this novella because I did enjoy it, but I do think that I enjoyed it less than the first one. A big reason that I loved the first book was the found family vibes that it had, and that really didn't exist much in this novella other than Murderbot reflecting on his previous interactions with the team from the first book. There were humans whom they worked with in this novel as well, but those humans were not anywhere near as interesting, engaging, or captivating as the humans from All Systems Red. Actually, I was sort of annoyed at the humans in this book and how dumb they were acting...which Murderbot apparently agreed with lol. That whole plot point with the humans trying to get their research back from a corrupt company didn't really work for me.
Still, I liked Murderbot trying to discover more of their past, specifically the incident that led to their name for themself. What they discovered felt like it fit perfectly in with the theme of the series (human/corporation greed, corruption, etc), and I am excited to see if Murderbot finds out any more about the company that led to the massacre. I wish we had gotten more of this side of things rather than the other plot I had been talking about, because overall, this book felt a bit uneven. Another reviewer indicated that potentially the complaints they had about this novella was due to high expectations coming off the first one, and I agree with that, since the first one was so good.
I did find the narrative a bit confusing and I had to reread some bits a couple of times in order to get the story straight in my head. When Murderbot was trying to figure out what happened during the massacre, it was a bit hard to keep straight at first. I'm not sure why that was because the writing itself wasn't complicated or difficult to read, but something about it was initially confusing. I had thought that there would be a connection between the company Murderbot had been contracted to when the massacre had happened and the company that had stolen the humans' data that was featured in present, but that didn't appear. Maybe it will come about later, or maybe it wasn't connected at all. If the latter though, then this novel definitely is a bit too split clearly between plot point 1 and plot point 2.
Positives include the new character/AI ART as well as Murderbot themselves. Their sarcasm, banter, and friendship was the highlight of this novella. I also loved Murderbot's coping skills of using media whenether they felt anxious and their general social awkwardness and anxiety. Their ability to grow and develop as well as become more self-aware as they learn is something that really feeds their general character development, which is always my favorite part of any novel. And yet, they remain snarky and pretends to hate everyone while protecting the humans. Despite having free will now, Murderbot chooses to help their new team (although they tried to justify it as ~well they hired me so I should do my job, but we all know that's not the only reason!) Always one of the best tropes imo.
I'm excited to continue following Murderbot's growth and developing free will. This novella really puts the question of what humanity is on the table, and I love how it grapples with that question throughout everything that happens. Hopefully, Murderbot will reunite with their original teammates so that I can get more feelings about ~stupid humans while they protect their team.
“So they made us smarter. The anxiety and depression were side effects."
I wanted so much to like this book more than I ended up liking it. It has all the things that are normally my bread and butter—dystopia, tr3.5 stars!
I wanted so much to like this book more than I ended up liking it. It has all the things that are normally my bread and butter—dystopia, true crime, sci-fi/cyberpunk elements, a shitty future, and snark. But despite that, I felt like this book wasted a lot of its potential, which was as bummer. Don't get me wrong, I still finished the book in a day and it was very much compulsively readable, but I felt like it could have been a lot more than it was. This was somewhere between a tongue-in-cheek satire and a sci-fi book, which sort of left me feeling stranded in the middle.
The worldbuilding was so great and it definitely made me think of Ready Player One, but where that book suceeded and this book struggled was how it drew people into the worldbuilding elements. What I mean by that is I felt like this book did a lot of showing not telling when it came to different aspects of the world it was trying to draw me into. There were a lot of points where either the narrator or one of the characters would just point blank explain new terms, and it was always very jarring when that happened. I know that things need to be explained to readers, but it could have been done with more finesse.
Other than that though, I found the world to be super interesting terrifying and...well, I'll be optimistic and not say realistic, but definitely not impossible either. None of it was particularly original in terms of imagining the future as a wasteland where everyone prefers to be online rather than in the real world (the Pendragon series did it in 2002 with The Reality Bug years ago, after all), but I still enjoyed reading about this author's vision of that particular future. When the author was describing the theme park and everyone wearing masks of past murderers and serial killers, I actually felt the claustrophobia and could imagine the horror as if I were there.
Characterization-wise, I definitely preferred Aly over Cass as the main character. (I'm pretty sure I did catch an editing error where at one point in the book, it said that Aly was 13 and not 15, which super confused me for a bit...and it wasn't the only mistake I found). Cass was fine, just sort of naive about everything, but maybe she's not used to having the conversations that we have about how giant companies are evil lol. The group of supporters/true crime survivors that Cass eventually found herself working with felt superfluous. They came up like twice and sang kumbaya and then disappeared again. They weren't even involved when it came to taking down the main baddies. Either the book needed to focus more time on them and develop them more or drop them altogether (and just have Hector and Vivian be the rebellion). And the book followed a lot of expected tropes, which isn't inherently bad, but it makes things fairly predictable (for the most part! The story did manage to surprise me a bit with some of the reveals, so it wasn't all predictable...but the main beats/plot points were very much so.)
My other thoughts were mostly about the points the author wanted to bring up about our world today. There were a lot of issues brought up other than the commercialization of true crime, such as school shootings, using children for capitalism, debt, alt right parental control over their kids, and other stuff. It was just a lot and again, I felt like a lot of it was sort of touched on and then never mentioned again (other than the true crime commercialization, of course). Obviously, the author couldn't go on and on about any of these issues, since there was a story to tell, but I just wanted so much stuff fleshed out more. Were people really okay with things in the society? What was the political climate when it came to social issues? Were there any rebellions? That kind of thing. And as far as the commercialization of true crime...well, I'm obviously super into true crime, and as Kate points out in Buried Bones, this is not a new phenomenon. People have been obsessed with true crime for centuries, like they used to pack into court rooms and attend public executions as a family day out. I don't think that aspect of our fascination with murder and murderers is new or solely a product of the current times. Do I think the true crime industry would ever go as far as what happened in the novel?
Well, this would probably have gotten 5 stars, or at least 4.75 (idk, I'm bad at making decisions) if the author hadn't d**spoiler alert** 4.5 stars!
Well, this would probably have gotten 5 stars, or at least 4.75 (idk, I'm bad at making decisions) if the author hadn't decided to not use quotation marks for no discernible reason. I was still able to follow the story and all that, but it was a weird and (imo) unnecessary choice that made things harder, because I did have to reread a bit here and there when I didn't realize that someone had said something. Stylistically, it just seemed really weird overall.
Otherwise, I loved the story and characters as well as the questions that it brought up about fate and choices. I found the concept super original and different from other time traveling books that I've read, and while we don't really know why the world is how it is with the time traveling, that never mattered to me, it was just accepted as "this is how the world is," and I think the skill of the author never made me need more worldbuilding as I occasionally need in other books. The pacing of the book was a bit off; I raced through the first half of the book, but the second half of the book was a bit slower and took a while to fully pay off. When it did pay off though, it was huge, and I wasn't ever actually bored in the second half, so that was also okay with me.
The main character was fascinating as well despite her occasional terrible choices in life. I appreciated her practicality in the second half (view spoiler)[like when she let Lucy die instead of trying to heroically help her or when she told Alain she wasn't going to help him (hide spoiler)] because so many characters are too heroic and end up doing dumb shit. Of course, Odile's life still sort of went to shit for a bit because of the choices that she made - which begs the question of whether it was fate and if she ever really had a choice, given the future her that she saw in the East.
Something that really stood out to me was when Odile ended up ultimately going back to save Edme in the past, but realized that it wasn't even really about saving him, but saving herself from her future fate. This wasn't a book about teenage romance, but able taking fate into your own hands when given the chance. (I saved you was such a powerful line.) I wanted the book to continue because I wanted to find out what would happen to Odile down the line, since future (past???) Odile changed her entire future in a way that meant that future Odile would never exist to go back and change the future again (...if that makes sense), but I really liked that the author ended it there and left it to the readers' imaginations. The book did end a bit abruptly, so I wish the ending had been a little more smooth, but otherwise, it was a great ending.
This was a book that really made me think about fate and choices, like I mentioned earlier, and books that make me think beyond the story itself always rate highly with me. This is a perfect book (except for the quotation marks issue) and I hope there's no sequel, because it works so well as a stand-alone....more
I have apparently been super into robot/AI and all the moral quandaries associated with that topic lately. I was super interes3.5 stars rounded down!
I have apparently been super into robot/AI and all the moral quandaries associated with that topic lately. I was super interested in the plot and set-up of this novel, and I feel like the author could have gone so much further with it than she did. This topic opens up so much about consent, feminism, body image, and more, and a lot of these issues were touched upon, but never fully explored or expanded on to the point where it could have gone. These are the reasons that I read books about sentient AI, so not be missing these made this book feel a bit like a let-down. Ultimately, this book just had a lot of unfulfilled potential and I wish the author had made different choices with/about it. I feel like the Murderbot series really does the sentient robot/AI thing well, whereas the author ended up fumbling a bit with this book.
Regarding characterization, I enjoyed reading about Annie from her POV and learning about the things and people whom she interacts with, especially with Doug and his friend Roland. I really enjoyed the way that this book pointed out the men's sexism and abuse without outright saying it; in fact, Annie is "happy" most of the time with Doug at first because she doesn't recognize that it is abuse. It's very much reminiscent of emotional and verbal abuse where the partner doesn't necessarily accept or know they are being abused at first until things come to a head.
Per another reviewer: The portrayal of an emotionally abusive relationship with the lingering threat of violence felt all too real. The only difference between Annie and those of us who have been there is that Annie is a robot. But isn’t that what abuse essentially does to a person? It makes us feel inhuman. It takes away our identity, our autonomy. It molds us into what our abuser wants us to be, and it tries so hard to convince us that this is what we want to be, too. It tells us that everything our abuser feels is our responsibility.
If the first half of the book had a low-key sinister vibe to it at first though, the second half of the book drops that completely. I felt like things took an upturn as Annie started developing her sentience, and I wanted the sinister nature of the book to continue throughout the rest of the novel. The second half of the book got a bit more boring, especially because Doug, which still a terrible person, sort of felt softened to the point where I didn't feel that tension that was drumming along in the first half. There were also a bunch of characters who showed up and then just disappeared forever without any real resolution (even though we "know" what happened to them, it just felt unresolved) - and what was with that guy who Annie thought she recognized (or maybe he recognized her? I forget the particulars because that's how memorable it was).
And then the ending was just like...WTF? It just left everything unresolved, and it really was not a good ending for what the rest of the book was. (view spoiler)[Will Doug come after Annie? Will Annie become more human and start living as a human? Will more robots achieve sentience and will there be a robot revolution? (hide spoiler)] WHO KNOWS? Not me, or apparently the author!
To the author's credit, I did enjoy watching Annie learn to understand and recognize her own emotions beyond those that related to Doug. I think a lot of people have difficulty with emotions, so reading about it from a robot's POV felt like great commentary, since even humans aren't great at them sometimes lol. Also, I like any books that are like "fuck the patriarchy!" I just really wanted more from this novel overall. I would recommend this book for anyone who likes Black Mirror, sentient AIs, and reading about emotionally difficult topics from a different lens/POV. ...more
I was worried about whether I would like this book or not for two reasons—first, while I did enjoy The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, it was also I was worried about whether I would like this book or not for two reasons—first, while I did enjoy The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, it was also quite confusing by the end of it, and I like to actually be able to understand the explanation of the mystery and see the progression. With that book, I felt like I needed to do at least another reread and draw a flow chart, and tbh that's more work than I like to put into a book. The second reason was that this book had lower than a 4-star average on GR. You'd think that I'd learn by now that I really enjoy a lot of books that have a lower than 4-star average.
That was definitely the case with this novel. I found it much less confusing than Evelyn, and it was thoroughly original and enjoyable. I really liked the worldbuilding and found it super interesting; I would love to find out more about the world and technology that was available before the world ending which was brought up here and there throughout the novel. However, it was a memorable novel not just because of the worldbuilding and characters, but because it wasn't just a mystery novel, but one set at the end of the world. How often do we get apocalyptical murder mysteries?
I will admit that Emory (one of the main characters) annoyed me a bit with how much she stuck out from the other villagers with her constant questioning of how things were. I'm not sure if that's just a me thing or if other people felt similarly, but I am very much not someone who does that, so whenever characters do that, it's super irritating. Obviously, it ends up being her strength and she ends up saving everyone, so it all worked out, but at the beginning when she was just irritating all the other villagers, it also irritated me as a reader. Otherwise, I really liked all the characters. I found them all to be generally well-developed despite the large numbers of them. Sometimes, having an ensemble cast can be difficult because the characters all start blending into one another, but that was definitely not the case here.
As far as the mystery/murder, it kept me guessing until the end. There were multiple red herrings, but as I mentioned, this time, it didn't feel confusing and I wasn't left perplexed at how everything had happened at the end of the novel, which means that it was well written/explained. I was sort of sad about The Death once everything was explained because although it was revealed that the person who died did bad and immoral things throughout her life, she ultimately died trying to atone for some of that and do something good for the villagers. I also really liked the themes this book brought up about (view spoiler)[free will, AI/robot rights, and the meaning of humanity when compared to the villagers who were grown from a lab but believed themselves to be human for most of the book (hide spoiler)].
This book lowkey gave me The Giver vibes, what with a closed society with assigned roles that exists after everything else has been destroyed where the villagers don't know anything about the days ~back then, and I loved The Giver as a kid, so it makes sense that the setting here really worked for me as well. The book really focuses on the terribleness of humanity and how we can start over in society (view spoiler)[and sort of came to the solution that all the humans in the novel had to die for the villagers to build a good society, so that was pretty pessimistic...but not wrong. Humans are terrible (hide spoiler)].
I just added the author's other book to my to-read list since I enjoyed this novel so much, and I do plan on rereading Evelyn at some point as well. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes AI rights, grappling with morality and being human, and wants to see a murder happen at the end of the world!...more
This book has been recommended to me for ages, but I didn't get around to it till now. I should probably have gotten on it earlier, because4.5 stars!
This book has been recommended to me for ages, but I didn't get around to it till now. I should probably have gotten on it earlier, because it was great! Despite how short it was, it was such a fun sci-fi romp with a great main character you can't help but root for. Well, we don't find out a ton about the human crew members, but Murderbot itself is such an endearing main character that it makes up for that. Anyway, I love how it interacts with the human crew and how they interact with it. I especially liked the initial lack of trust, but how some of the crew started becoming its...friend (?) or something like that over time, because it felt super heartwarming in light of how protective Murderbot gets over its people, especially later on.
Also, the whole "I hate people but also I would do anything for my people" is basically one of my favorite tropes, so whether or not it's a person saying that or a robot (say, a Murderbot) is irrelevant, because I will love it all the same. I put the next four books on hold at the library because I'm excited to see what it ends up getting up to. The writing itself was witty and really hooked me in from the first couple pages, and the plot was interesting and helped me understand the world we were in a bit better without throwing just pages of strict worldbuilding at me. For a short book, it is also super smart and hits on greater issues within society without dwelling on them or making them so obvious that readers feel bogged down or condescended to.
I think short stories can be hard to balance right—the author definitely gets this one right.
“I could have become a mass murderer after I hacked my governor module, but then I realized I could access the combined feed of entertainment channels carried on the company satellites. It had been well over 35,000 hours or so since then, with still not much murdering, but probably, I don't know, a little under 35,000 hours of movies, serials, books, plays, and music consumed. As a heartless killing machine, I was a terrible failure.�
I think I'm giving up on this series because I don't understand anything that is happening in it. I got through this whole book with a sort of detachmI think I'm giving up on this series because I don't understand anything that is happening in it. I got through this whole book with a sort of detachment where I was just reading and understanding the individual words and sentences, but not really fully following the plotline or anything. It just feels like the characters were running around from one place to another throughout the entire novel. Old characters would leave and never be heard of again, and new characters would come in. None of the characters were developed or had any personality or anything, and they only were there to serve the plot instead of the other way around with the plot servicing the characters. None of them seemed to have grown or developed by the end of the novel, and nothing was really resolved.
This really feels like those instances in TV when the writers make storylines too complicated and then have no idea how to actually resolve anything. With all the dimension hopping and alternate universes and everything, it's all too convoluted to make much sense anymore, and I don't even have good character development to at least hang onto, because the main character could literally have been substituted by anyone else and nothing much would have changed overall.
I'm actually surprised by the general rating on this book, given that I think his other works are generally much higher rated, and who does4.25 stars!
I'm actually surprised by the general rating on this book, given that I think his other works are generally much higher rated, and who doesn't like a good time travel/plucked out of time story? I was a little apprehensive that the lower rating meant that I would not enjoy it, but I found it to be the opposite!
While I didn't fall in love with the main character, I still enjoyed his antics well enough. It was fun to go on the journey with him in regards to figure out what was going on, since both him and the reader start out in exactly the same place knowledge-wise of the world that he is in. I adored a lot of the side characters though, especially Ealstan, and I really enjoyed how they helped the main character realize that he had worth and that his friends from his past life were shit lol. So basically lots of good character development, which is my main book kink. But I never fully connected with him either; he felt more like a blank slate that I could project myself onto in some ways (which makes sense since he couldn't remember anything to start with).
What I particularly liked about this book was the fact that it touches on stuff that anyone today would probably have to deal with if traveling back in time that we don't really think about. For example, the main character was trying to think about how to demonstrate that he was a "wizard" (aka from the future), but realized that he had no idea how to actually do that. It's not like any of us know how to build a fridge or a phone or any of that, so without that infrastructure already in place, we would all be fucked in the past. Also, the main character was expecting castles and shit, but had landed during a time before any of that was even a thing, and at least for me, when I think about going back to medieval times, I would have expected castles and would be so confused if I ended up in a time before that.
I was a little bit hmm about the sci-fi/fantasy genre mix. I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it either, though I don't know that I could explain why I didn't love it. I think it just was really jarring and ended up pulling me out of the story every time all the portals and dimensional travel stuff came up, especially because I was mainly enjoying this story for all the complications related to time travel. I did really like bits of the Handbook that was shown, but I basically just had to handwave the "science" because...yeah, idk what is going on with any of that. The weird sci-fi/fantasy mash-up is what took off some of a star for me, because otherwise I would have probably given it at least 4.75.
I know this author is a big name in fantasy, so I'm excited to read his other ~pure fantasy books (aka Mistborn: The Final Empire to see if that will also jive with me. ...more
I loved this book so much! I knew that it had a ton of high ratings, but I was still a little skeptical since I haven't felt like reading sci-fi for qI loved this book so much! I knew that it had a ton of high ratings, but I was still a little skeptical since I haven't felt like reading sci-fi for quite a while, and I also have been burned by highly rated books that everyone else is talking about. But I adored everything about it. I don't know what people are talking about with the main character, because I loved her from the beginning. Everyone was like "Oh I hated her but then I began to root for her as she developed and became a better person," and I was just like "Nah she's great, give me more" the whole time. But I do also like my characters with a shitty edge as long as there's something I can connect to in them and as long as they develop past how they started.
The plot was fantastic—I love space and dystopia and people seeing through the dystopia for what it really is, and I love found family, which we got a lot more of in the second half of the novel. All the revelations just made me keep turning the page to find out more. It only took me so long to finish the book because I was also playing a lot of BG3 at the time lol. Some of the things that happened were things I did not expect but also totally worked, and I loved that. Every time I figured, "Okay, now X is going to happen," the book completely pivoted to Y, but it didn't feel contrived. The author just didn't follow a bunch of common tropes and I love her for it.
(Of note, I didn't understand some of the fake science, but that's fine, I just skimmed over some of those explanations and didn't feel like I lost anything.)
And then everything that happened in the last third of the book was perfect. The alternate universe, the Sparrows coming together, the way that Kyr faced off against the main dictator/cult leader, and the ending of the book itself. By the end of the book, we had gone on such a twisty turny journey that I didn't even recognize the beginning of the same novel.
Anyway, everyone keeps comparing this to the Locked Tomb series, so I should probably get on that...soon. ...more
I had such high hopes for this book, but I seem to be in the minority in my opinion on it. I honestly hated it and it took me a while to ma1.75 stars!
I had such high hopes for this book, but I seem to be in the minority in my opinion on it. I honestly hated it and it took me a while to make myself finish it. The concept seemed super interesting and I was hoping for worldbuilding and exploring this dystopian world, but the author really didn't do that. It really just focused on this one lady in a sort of short stream of consciousness type of writing who was honestly sort of annoying. I actually don't mind the stream of consciousness writing when it's done well, but only when I don't hate the character lol. I appreciated that this book explored grief and parenthood, but it just started dragging.
My other issue with the book is the main character's child. omg most annoying child in the world. She was so fucking annoying, and the main character didn't do anything to parent the child. She just let her kid do whatever, even though the government was watching and she kept worrying the government would take her child away. But even then, she was like /sure whatever/ even when her child was like trying to form a coalition against the government. Also the child was like eight at this point. At six, the kid asked about power and who holds power, which is just unrealistic af. I couldn't believe it.
There were also just a lot of sex scenes and I wasn't about that. It just got sort of gratuitous and porn-y after a while. If I wanted to read porn, I would have read an erotica book, not a dystopian novel.
Tbh the only characters I liked were the side characters and I was over the main character and her child within the first 25% of the book. I gave it 1.75 stars because I couldn't even justify giving it 2 stars, but there were some lines I liked in the book (and I liked the basic concept), so I guess it's better than 1 1/2 stars....more
I read this for a class I was taking on worldbuilding in fiction as an example of ~styles of worldbuilding. At first, I was like "What is happening heI read this for a class I was taking on worldbuilding in fiction as an example of ~styles of worldbuilding. At first, I was like "What is happening here, I don't really get what is happening in this world?" But then once we got to the twist, I was just like "Woahhhh." I really wish this had been longer because I want to know what happens, but at the same time, this works much better in terms of impact on the reader, so I get why it was the length that it was.
I had a whole discussion with my friends about what we think about the situation described in this story. I'm very much ~good of many over good of one, but I think reading this made me feel uncomfortable (which is clearly the point). Not enough for me to necessarily change my viewpoint, but hey, at least it made me think!
I know someone else wrote a sequel of sorts, but I sort of want to keep this experience the way it was because this story is just so powerful. ...more
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