2025-03-30
score: 7.5
type: fiction
wow, what an interesting book. i've always had a soft spot for dystopian science-fiction.
this book is written is a very interesting way, where each chapter is narrated by a different character. this makes the book difficult to understand, especially the first few chapters. what adds to the confusion is that there isn't a lot of context building, at least initially. however, i think that this slight confusion improves the experience of reading this book. we want to understand, so we continue reading.
the end of the book clarifies many of the questions that floated through my head.
because of the book structure, it makes me want to read it again. i think the second read would be a totally different experience.
artificial intelligence is also of such current affair that it made the book feel ever so real (and scary).
i also appreciate how the mothers described humanity, I enjoy when authors create non-humans characters as vehicles to attempt to define humanity.
here are some of my favorite quotes (in order of appearance):
I loved me. But I also didn’t love me. Both these things were true, as far as I could tell.
this is funny because she has many clones, so me means a different physical body.
“How else could they have carried on spreading war and famine and pollution like they did for quite so long? Talk about hubris!”
Thoughts? Not really. I just sit and feel the bench under my butt, and sense the temperature changing on my skin, and from time to time I notice how the light hits or the wind’s blowing.
Inside love, there was hate.
“You’re a very human human. You create things, and you destroy more than you create.”
And yet, irony of ironies: whenever a change budded in you, a corrective force also arose, without fail, to resist it. Thus you would be the cause of your own destruction.
You humans. Who once were alive, just like me. May you find a way to save yourselves.