Full book review after this weekend's book club meeting.

Updated:

This novel was almost unbearable to continue. I just don't think it's my style. I understand it might have an appeal to others... Right away I don't get any comparisons made to Hunger Games and when I thought perhaps the bees and hive would be used in a similar way as Animal Farm, nope. It's just about bees. And maybe religion? But there's nothing particularly riveting about Flora, our main bee, the little worker bee who can do basically everything and yet is relegated to the sanitation department...though she seems to move between strata with ease? It made me curious about what bees actually do, but not enough to look up each and every fact within. I wish there was a little appendix or something that was like "female bees groom and cater to their male drone bees before they fly out to try to breed, totally true!" or "nope spiders are not psychic and do not trade bee sacrifices for info."

The writing is incredibly repetitive and the book needed a better editor. The beginning was a slog (many fellow book clubbers found it hard to continue, some didn't finish). I could see where the book was going pretty early on, and the ending climactic scene made my eyes roll. I was just not invested in these characters or what happened to the hive. I expected something that articulated a human experience, but that's my fault to have that kind of expectations. This book is just about bee life...fake bee life. I would rather have read a non-fiction book if I wanted to explore the life of bees.

Again: others may find this interesting, I really did not.

SPOILER -

The only good part was when the lady bees gathered all those male drones and massacred them. That was sweet.