Ok I have to preface this by the fact that this is a very long book that I did not finish because of issues I will explain. I haven't included a synopsis because the blurb for the book doesn't resemble what I've read - I'm assuming that a lot more happens so I will say if you don't find the beginning 150-200 pages the same kind of road block that I did, there's probably a much meatier story lurking behind it.
But I was forcing myself to read long before I stopped and for the sake of an honest review, it doesn't matter if your book becomes awesome in the last 300 pages, if the first 300 pages are too much of a roadblock to meet it. But if you can get past that road block, you may love it.
Now - onwards:
Recently we took part in the Book Smuggler’s holiday
Smugglivus and one of the points we raised on our
Inclusive
Ingrid post was:
Sometimes Inclusive Ingrid wrote this book
to tell us that racism/homophobia/sexism/ableism et al is bad, guys. Let me tell you how bad it is, because it’s really
really bad. Have you not seen how bad it is? Don’t worry, this book makes it
very very clear. Example after example, incident after incident all explained
in detail. It’s a wonderful lecture on the damage and prevalence of prejudice! Unfortunately what it isn’t, is a story. Inclusive Ingrid
has sat herself down and written one long PSA, shoe-horned in some downtrodden
vampires and a werewolf who wants to expound on their women’s studies notes,
and neglected to actually include a plot. Or characters we don’t want to
cheerfully beat to death with their own sociology 101 texts.
That’s pretty much the very definition of this book. It
is there to make a point and it does to at length and with great repetition.
Some time ago
I
read the
Sword of Truth series by
Terry Goodkind which was, basically, a great big love in to Ayn Rand and the
joys of libertarianism. This book is Anarchism version – one long polemic on
how anarchy, no government etc is such a wonderful thing conveyed through an
alien living in a utopian society describing his world and showing us the way
to fix our world.
Now, I’ll add another preface by saying I am a very liberal
person – I am, in many ways, the commie-pinko-socialist the right wingers love
to hate – so many of the points the author was trying to raise definitely
resonated with me: environmental destruction, wealth inequality, lack of
representation in democracy, the way politicians try to hold power – so, no I’m
not putting this book down because it clashes with my political views because
in some ways it doesn’t (until the libertarianism raises its ugly head).
But it is mind numbingly naïve and simplistic to a point
where I’m not sure whether the author even believes what they’re writing or is
trying to parody them
Most of this lecturing is delivered by having an alien,
Albert, describe his society to many people, starting with married couple Tom
and Samantha. After many many many many lectures (and shenanigans from a Completely
Awful Journalist) a television interview happens which is very very very long and
this, in turn, leads to a big societal uprising that Tom and Samantha lead
In some ways it was very useful that it was an alien that
communicated their world and society because it required a completely alien
world and an alien society for me to believe it was workable. The inherent
practicality of it that even the book has to acknowledge is backed by a lot of
special alien woo-woo to cover any of the inconveniences that putting humans in
this system would bring (not least of which are the aliens not needing cooked
food, food storage, medicine, sanitation, construction, recorded history,
literature, written communication at all, transport, education – so much more).
Basically, the alien physiology (and low resource nature of their world)
renders any kind of collective undertaking unnecessary. They live as
free-thinking individuals without leadership, hierarchy, government or laws
because absolutely nothing in their society or world requires collective
effort. And even this doesn’t follow through in their depiction – because this
society with virtually stone age tool use (and even that is helped by an
incredibly convenient ecology that produces easily customisable items) has
still managed to produce chemical and biological weapons… somehow.
