As film analogies go this one reminded me of Children of Men. As with that movie this is a dark, dystopian near-future world in which women are also increasingly infertile. Meaning those few who can give birth are often well-paid surrogates, treated like queens. And as with Children of men, despite all the squalor and ugliness, there is still something beautiful about the hope and light embodied in a few figures set in this much bleeker world to come.
As book analogies go, David Brin’s Existence came to mind, where too the near future world depicted entailed so many overwhelming changes due to the increasing pace at which technology is impacting our world. To say nothing of the accelerating effects of environmental degradation and global warming. Life is thus caught in a vicious circle where things rapidly go from bad to worse in no time at all, because human events unfolding now feed the cyclone. The author deftly packs in so much of these changes that leave the locals overwhelmed, but she does it without overwhelming the reader by deftly spoon-feeding you a little bit with each chapter. Much of the first half of the book in fact is dedicated to world building with the A-story or central plot line barely kicking in and not heading full-steam forward until the second half of the book. And this is just as well because there is so much to take in. Handling it the way the writer did allows the moody dystopian world to just ooze into your skin the way it did in the movie Blade Runner. Artful spoon-feeding of information to “get it all in”—a hundred years of change or more inside of the next five to ten years—also reminded me of how Herbert handled things in Dune. In a like manner they say to be alive in 2017 is to have experienced more change in the last ten years than the human race has experienced in the last hundred. So the author is wise to anticipate this trend will continue; it adds tremendous realism to her writing.
When the plot does finally kick in during the 2nd half of the novel, it’s a juicy one, and I won’t go beyond the hints given in the blurb to avoid spoilers. I will say that another standout for me was our heroine. Her presence makes the novel a hybrid sub-genre of sci-fi and mystery with a defective-detective at the helm, and probably one of the most original I’ve come across. She suffers from synesthesia, smelling colors, seeing sounds, tasting feelings. Her wires are crossed so her senses can’t be trusted. As if her world isn’t trying enough, her demons dog her from within as much as they dog her from without.
The author also elects for a journalistic, almost documentary-style of storytelling which adds impact, and doesn’t allow the reader to dismiss this as some alternate reality that for however dark is one they’re insulated from. Part of the inescapable sense of the human-spirit-crushing future comes also from how many details about our present time and world are woven into the story. We experience our present reality thus literally fragmenting into this more psychotic near-future space by how readily it integrates with our here and now.
The fact that the story is set in South Africa also lends a travel-lit dimension to the story, a bit of exoticness that plays to the dual fascination of attraction to and repulsion from everything we’re reading.
Highly recommended for the discerning reader who’s drowning in dystopian drivel that dominates the sci-fi market these days, but lacks imagination, and is entirely derivative. But only if you’re looking for the diamond in the coal mine.
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Walter Scott
Are your parents really your parents?
Reviewed in Canada on October 16, 2017
