dystopianfiction – takes two to book review

Anna’s January Wrap Up

February 3, 2021 Anna and AlexisLeave a comment

Between continuing to distance from others and the wintery weather, my reading was a major comfort and escape this month. I’m also happy with the diverse genres and authors I was able to read this month. I read two nonfiction books (one memoir and one cookbook), and two books by Indigenous authors, both of which work in favor of my 2021 reading goals. Here’s what I read:

The Woman in White: Started off the year with an atmospheric, satisfying classic mystery.

Elatsoe: Spooky magical YA by an Indigenious author. My only criticism is that this read VERY young to me.

Moon of the Crusted Snow: actually a literary dystopian as promised (unlike Migrations) Written by an Indigenous author.

Migrations: The low point of my reading month. Do not recommend this one. Read my review.

Salt Fat Acid Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking: This made-to-be-read cookbook changes the food game! Check out my review.

After the Eclipse: A Mother’s Murder, a Daughter’s Search (audiobook; not pictured); A heartbreaking memoir about the author’s mother’s murder. Also a criticism of the explorative nature of true crime as a genre.

Review: Borne by Jeff VandeerMeer

July 2, 2019 Anna and AlexisLeave a comment

Anna: New favorite book alert! Dystopian is one of my favorite genres, and I’m trying to read more sci-fi. Borne had the perfect amount of both! Verdict: 5 stars

In an apocalyptic city, a corporation called the The Company that has poisoned and polluted the world. Strange creatures roam the remaining landscape: Mutant humans, Company proxies, and most noticeably, the Company’s biotech experiment gone wrong, a giant flying bear called Mord that terrorizes the City and its survivors.

Rachel and Wick live in a dilapidated apartment building, spending hours every day fortifying their home to stay alive. One day while she’s out scavenging, Rachel finds a sea-anemone like creature that she takes home. She names it Borne.

Sounds crazy, right? It is. Borne is adorable, but at the start of the book his nature and purpose is unknown. Wick is suspicious that Borne may be more deadly than he appears. Rachel begins to care for Borne like a mother would a child, except he grows in size and intelligence faster than any human. Rachel and Borne’s relationship is sincere, heartbreaking, and unable to define. This book had me thinking a lot about what it means to be good. There’s also an overall question of if we can control or nature or not, or if we’re predestined to be what we’re made to be.

Borne is the most creative and quirky book I’ve read in a long time! It was so original and I loved the three central characters, especially Borne. What I found most impressive is its ability to be light and laugh-out loud funny despite its dark setting.

Click below to learn more about Borne!

Review: The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker

April 30, 2019April 30, 2019 Anna and AlexisLeave a comment

Anna: I love apocalyptic fiction, but I heard so many conflicting opinions about this author’s recent release, The Dreamers, that I decided to start with her previous novel.

The Age of Miracles has a lot of potential. At surface level, this book sounds like something I should love. It’s a character drive coming-of-age apocalyptic novel with a young and likable female protagonist, Julia. When earth’s days begin to slow and lengthen, society is split into people who follow the new system of “clock time” and people who abide by the sun and follow “real time”. Those who chose to follow real time are alienated, and the mainstream clock timers begin to exhibit symptoms of a gravity-driven disease.

This book scratches at the surface of something, and then fails to focus on the right things. When something interesting involving the end of the world happened I kept thinking, “we’ll get to that soon” but over and over again, we don’t. The societal division between clock time and real time is such an interesting idea, for example, but it is hardly explored. So much of this book feels like it’s on the surface of something but instead of diving deeper turns away and continues to explore the mundane and expected.

Another big problem I had is that many of the characters just don’t feel believable, besides Julia, who is about only thing about this book that feels real. Julia’s parents are poor stereotypes of a heterosexual marriage. Julia’s mom is always worried, anxious, and nagging her father, while her father is factual and completely robotic. I found it absolutely ridiculous and unbelievable that Julia’s father is completely unworried by the end of the world. HELLO, who wouldn’t be freaking out if Earth’s gravity shifted, people began to get sick, and the days unexplainably lengthened. The fact that he isn’t concerned at all about any of these things drove me insane. The author continually makes Julia’s mom out to be crazy for her anxieties, but since she’s the only character who seems scared by the impending doom, she’s one of the only characters I feel I can trust.

Don’t get me started on Seth. Walker just couldn’t decide what kind of character she wanted him to be. For such a character-driven novel, I expected more dynamic and complicated characters, and this isn’t the case. Both the plot and the characterization fall short.

VERDICT: 3 out of 5 books