Womb City is absolutely brutal - a journey into a horrific imagined future Botswana where bodies and wombs are sold, oppressive patriarchal systems are all-powerful, and nothing is quite as it seems.

We’re following Nelah, a woman desperate to maintain her status in life and have a child. But her relationship is infertile and she is existing in a body that has previously committed a crime – so her powerful husband picks apart her microchip data and an AI determines her worth to society. She lives with a crushing amount of terror and dread that one day, she’ll fail one of their tests.

She’s hanging on by a thread until a devastating hit-and-run that leaves a young woman dead. Nelah and her secret lover must avoid a ghost hungry for revenge, protect Nelah’s child, and figure out what is actually moving the cogs of her world.

This is a world with AI, elevated technology (including microchips that monitor and control you and simulated wombs), and body hopping with multiple life spans. And in addition to all the technology, there are ancient gods that may or may not have active powers. While all of this was fascinating and cool, it became very convoluted very quickly. I found myself struggling to connect all of the dots and to keep up with the plot while holding so much information in my mind. 

Although the details of the society are quite different from our current reality, the commentary is very realistic and hits hard. These characters are being punished for the bodies they were placed into (only the very powerful get to retain memories/cultural knowledge and choose their physical forms). They are punished for thoughts and for simply having the potential to commit crimes. The tension and fear is unreal, even in just the first chapters. It reminded me a bit of a Black Mirror episode. 

The characters are complicated. They are imperfect, and even the protagonists make some rough decisions. I definitely felt as though I was living their journeys with them and understood their thought processes. I enjoyed a lot of the prose, but I sometimes felt the dialogue meandered and was a bit unrealistically melodramatic - and the book overall was overflowing.

The plot touches on SO much. Misogyny, racism, xenophobia, classism, violence, infertility, and beyond. It tackles patriarchy through body swapping, how insidious and all-powerful oppressive systems can become, and it blends in tech and folklore as well. It’s a whirlpool of terror and was a bit of a challenge to read, understand, and process. And then that ENDING! You’re never given a chance to settle into anything expected.

I was fascinated and my jaw was on the floor and truthfully I’m still having a tough time figuring out my thoughts on this one and who I would recommend it to. It was a RIDE for sure. 

CW: murder, death, gore, body horror, misogyny, car accident, infertility, rape, infidelity, classism, gaslighting, grief, trafficking, police brutality, incest, cannibalism, vomit, child abuse

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