314 pages
Published 2019
Read from July 13 to July 30
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
This book was unlucky enough to fall into one of my occasional ADHD reading slumps. The prose is solid enough; the worldbuilding is fascinating; I enjoyed the characters; I loved the social commentary that underpins everything in the book. And of course I have to love a book so riddled with classic funk references. But I just couldn’t focus and read it for more than a couple pages at a time. That’s summer when you have a kid to look after, I suppose. (Let alone the summer when the global climate undergoes an obvious and perilous phase-shift and we face all the dread of an uncertain new era coupled with a redoubled rise of fascism.)
In a steam-powered Indianapolis still subject to the crown of Albion, Broaddus builds a grim and altogether too close-to-home satire of a right-wing corporate authoritarian state. Residents (especially Black folk) are brutalized by City Ordained Pinkertons while state-approved news media regurgitate fascist talking points praising privatization and the free market solving governmental inefficiencies. The entire system (little different than our own, in case you missed the allegory) functions to strip Black people of their status as people and ship them off as free labor for capitalists.
Poet Sleepy is in the wrong place at the wrong time and must go on the run with his new acquaintance (120 Degrees of) Knowledge Allah. Meanwhile, young heiress and disgraced scientist Sophine must navigate upper-crust politics, ubiquitous sexism, racism, and personal tragedy while unraveling a mystery with far-reaching ramifications. As is often the case with alternating perspectives, this structure gums up the pacing, shunting us off to a different storyline just when the other is accelerating. One chapter might end on a cliffhanger, and then the next will breeze through several weeks of perspective from the other character.
Pacing, I think, is the main thing that detracts from this book. I can’t tell if all the novellas and short fiction I’ve been reading have made me forget how longer books are paced, or if it’s something intrinsic to this particular novel. Either way, I greatly enjoyed reading it, overall!
No comments:
Post a Comment