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coris 's review for:
A Song for a New Day
by Sarah Pinsker
Genre & Tags: dystopian, post-pandemic (pre-Covid), live music scene, virtual reality
Content warnings: As listed by Storygraph, but also bear in mind it has terrorism .
Luce Cannon is a rising rock star when terror attacks and deadly viruses lead the Government to ban live music events (and any other gathering over a tiny number of attendees.) Several years later, she's performing in illegal venues, sharing her music and connecting with like minds as best she can. Rosemary Laws helps customers order everything online for drone delivery -- in-person shopping is extremely limited and most activites are done in an internet-enabled, Virtual Reality-ish hoodie. (It's the opposite of the point of the book, but I'd kinda love one of these!) But by being a genuinely nice person, she stumbles into a job talent scouting new music acts for a VR concert producer. Except, tracking down illegal musicians is hard when you've spent most of your life at home with little real-life contact.
This book was QUITE A LOT after living through Covid, and if you had / are having a hard pandemic, maybe skip it. It's a slow-paced character study of the two protagonists and how they meet and change each other's paths, with a tonne of reflecting about music performance, the nature and meaning of live music, what we lose when we don't connect in person, and so on. It was published in late 2019, so it's interesting to see the differences between an imaginary catastrophe, and what we all actually experienced. But also to see how much is right on the mark -- or could happen in only slightly different circumstances. Quite different to my usual reading, but well worth it.
Content warnings: As listed by Storygraph, but also bear in mind it has
Luce Cannon is a rising rock star when terror attacks and deadly viruses lead the Government to ban live music events (and any other gathering over a tiny number of attendees.) Several years later, she's performing in illegal venues, sharing her music and connecting with like minds as best she can. Rosemary Laws helps customers order everything online for drone delivery -- in-person shopping is extremely limited and most activites are done in an internet-enabled, Virtual Reality-ish hoodie. (It's the opposite of the point of the book, but I'd kinda love one of these!) But by being a genuinely nice person, she stumbles into a job talent scouting new music acts for a VR concert producer. Except, tracking down illegal musicians is hard when you've spent most of your life at home with little real-life contact.
This book was QUITE A LOT after living through Covid, and if you had / are having a hard pandemic, maybe skip it. It's a slow-paced character study of the two protagonists and how they meet and change each other's paths, with a tonne of reflecting about music performance, the nature and meaning of live music, what we lose when we don't connect in person, and so on. It was published in late 2019, so it's interesting to see the differences between an imaginary catastrophe, and what we all actually experienced. But also to see how much is right on the mark -- or could happen in only slightly different circumstances. Quite different to my usual reading, but well worth it.