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roadtripreader 's review for:
The Expert System's Brother
by Adrian Tchaikovsky
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
From the future looking back - all the way back to our time right now. The same way we look back to before the Dark Ages. What a book!
This book hits different as a child of parents who followed 2 violently opposing Abrahamic religions. (My siblings and I are basically proof these 2 religions can coexist I guess). Something eery about this story. It feels like the moment when hope is snuffed out - and yet, a slither remains. The way Tchaikovsky weaves the Casting Out/The Severance is magnificent, filled with the dread and the threat of violence both physical and emotional without actual violence in the way we understand it. The horror of being cut off and left to fend out in the wild and even hope that somehow, what is set in stone can be reversed are all themes in the opening chapters and just so haunting.
At first, I willed the community to see their error which was that ancient bag of bones Doctor's fault entirely - yet the community of Aro was set in its ways. Immovable, unchangeable and also ridiculous. And that right there is the moment I noticed what Aro and the Severance represented. And yet; the metaphor, the allegory, the curtain still wove and told this tale with painful elegance. Thereafter all I wanted for the main character was liberation and peace away from that community.
The Ghosts who took over the human host and dictated utter garbage to keep the sheep in check and unquestioning, not curious, just docile and at peace. But ambition and questioning, that seed of knowledge, first in the village of Orvo, via Ilbis, The Architect and then Sharskin, the Outcast Priest Would-Be-God granted "wisdom" and "truth" and who yearns for followers in a more frightening fashion that the ghosts of the old communities.
A new cycle begins. Like Moses but without the tribes of many, just Handry and Ostel, of they wandered into the "desert" in search of their place to belong. "Where it all began"
I digested this book in a way that the poor protagonist couldn't digest even an ounce of "normal" food thanks to the severance he did not deserve.
This book hits different as a child of parents who followed 2 violently opposing Abrahamic religions. (My siblings and I are basically proof these 2 religions can coexist I guess). Something eery about this story. It feels like the moment when hope is snuffed out - and yet, a slither remains. The way Tchaikovsky weaves the Casting Out/The Severance is magnificent, filled with the dread and the threat of violence both physical and emotional without actual violence in the way we understand it. The horror of being cut off and left to fend out in the wild and even hope that somehow, what is set in stone can be reversed are all themes in the opening chapters and just so haunting.
At first, I willed the community to see their error which was that ancient bag of bones Doctor's fault entirely - yet the community of Aro was set in its ways. Immovable, unchangeable and also ridiculous. And that right there is the moment I noticed what Aro and the Severance represented. And yet; the metaphor, the allegory, the curtain still wove and told this tale with painful elegance. Thereafter all I wanted for the main character was liberation and peace away from that community.
The Ghosts who took over the human host and dictated utter garbage to keep the sheep in check and unquestioning, not curious, just docile and at peace. But ambition and questioning, that seed of knowledge, first in the village of Orvo, via Ilbis, The Architect and then Sharskin, the Outcast Priest Would-Be-God granted "wisdom" and "truth" and who yearns for followers in a more frightening fashion that the ghosts of the old communities.
A new cycle begins. Like Moses but without the tribes of many, just Handry and Ostel, of they wandered into the "desert" in search of their place to belong. "Where it all began"
I digested this book in a way that the poor protagonist couldn't digest even an ounce of "normal" food thanks to the severance he did not deserve.