The Future

It started off pretty interesting with the end of the world starting and the rich people running away, and this the novel just died. It got so boring and nothing was going on and it was trying to weave things around too many characters. I got 1/2 way through and just couldn't keep going.

Oh so relevant… will be looking for other books from this author. If you like Atwood, you will like this.

Interesting - Conspiracy

I hate Deus ex Machina, I mean really hate it. This book is one long deus ex machina with a character literally playing as God. The plot is fairly solid and, for the most part, the story moves along with a few slowdowns: what was the point of all the biblical interpretation? Not to mention, the ultimate utopia, everything's coming up roses ending is far too simplistic to be acceptable as real. So basically if someone offed Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, Andy Jaasy/Jeff Bezos the world would suddenly become a utopia???!! Speaking of characters, the characters, even the major ones, were little more than 2D cutouts. Even Zhen, whom we spent the most time with can be boiled down to a couple characteristics as she really only existed to move the plot forward.

I enjoyed her previous book, The Power, but thought it seemed like it needed more finishing work, a bit rushed to publication. This book is so much better in my mind. It brings Alderman up to the level of the Crichton's future minded works. I got about 60 pages into it, just enjoying it, then realized I liked it enough to recommend it to one of the book clubs I'm in, and then I was putting stickies in it to mark the pages of things I really wanted to come back to for discussion. There are well over 50 stickies in it!

One thing that will irritate some people is that it jumps around in time to relay events. It might be Martha's childhood, or anytime for one of a couple of people during about a three year span. And at the end of the book, it jumps forward a few years, and keep reading after the Acknowledgments - there's a few pages about the far future.

Now that the irritating part is dealt with - Alderman did a great job thinking about societal impacts of technology, what tech might be available in the sort of near future, how tech can be manipulated, and the psychology of the billionaire narcissists (can anyone say Elon Musk?). The use of religion and cults is well done.

In some ways, it reminds me of The Ministry for the Future by Robinson. Both of these books look at the dire situation we have put ourselves and the climate in, and they find a way to confront it, and find a way forward.

Fiction can be simply entertainment, but the best fiction is entertainment that pushes us to confront issues in society and inspires us to think forward and find a way to make a difference. Alderman has accomplished that.