Take a photo of a barcode or cover
booksellersdiary 's review for:
Vox
by Christina Dalcher
It’s taken me a while to process my thoughts on this book.
While I was reading it, I enjoyed it on a surface level. It’s a great book to smash through in a couple days. Or to take on a long plane ride. It’s easy, the book explains itself to you. You don’t need to think too much.
However...
Firstly, to compare this to the literary master than is Handmaids Tale is an insult to Margaret Atwood. This is not a reimagining, as exclaimed by various reviews on the cover. It might have been inspired by, but it doesn’t come close.
It’s preachy. I’m not religious, but even I was offended by the barely concealed hate the author seems to have for Christianity. Leave your personal vendetta and agenda out of your writing. Could have made the same point by creating your own dystopian religion.
The world created is just the world we have now. She might as well have called the President Trump and been done with it. This isn’t a character created by the author, he exists today.
But what annoyed me the most though was the way almost the entire book was spent setting up this huge ending where Jean could have been this badass heroine who saves the world, and then the ending is a couple chapters (and one of those chapters is barely two pages of text). It is rushed, and I have since learned the entire book was written really quickly. This shows. There are character arcs that need to be fleshed out more, relationships we barely get a glimpse of - which makes it hard to connect to these people.
Jean starts the book as this world renowned scientist, rebelling against new laws and reforms in her own small ways. She is reflective, she seems to have learned that being passive is what landed her in this world of no words. By the end, she is back to being passive doing only what the men tell her - her husband, her lover, mailman and even the bad guys all telling her what to do and she just blindly follows along not thinking for herself. She’s a scientist, analytical thinking should be her strong suit.
And to top it off, this feminist dystopian world is saved by... two men. Yep. TWO MEN save the world, despite there being several women who could have. Why? Whyyyyyy? In the end it is the husband of our main character who gets to save the world, be a martyr and die for his family. And what does our heroine Jean get? A happily ever after in Italy with the man of her dreams.
5/5 for eye rolls. 🙄
2.5/5 stars.
While I was reading it, I enjoyed it on a surface level. It’s a great book to smash through in a couple days. Or to take on a long plane ride. It’s easy, the book explains itself to you. You don’t need to think too much.
However...
Firstly, to compare this to the literary master than is Handmaids Tale is an insult to Margaret Atwood. This is not a reimagining, as exclaimed by various reviews on the cover. It might have been inspired by, but it doesn’t come close.
It’s preachy. I’m not religious, but even I was offended by the barely concealed hate the author seems to have for Christianity. Leave your personal vendetta and agenda out of your writing. Could have made the same point by creating your own dystopian religion.
The world created is just the world we have now. She might as well have called the President Trump and been done with it. This isn’t a character created by the author, he exists today.
But what annoyed me the most though was the way almost the entire book was spent setting up this huge ending where Jean could have been this badass heroine who saves the world, and then the ending is a couple chapters (and one of those chapters is barely two pages of text). It is rushed, and I have since learned the entire book was written really quickly. This shows. There are character arcs that need to be fleshed out more, relationships we barely get a glimpse of - which makes it hard to connect to these people.
Jean starts the book as this world renowned scientist, rebelling against new laws and reforms in her own small ways. She is reflective, she seems to have learned that being passive is what landed her in this world of no words. By the end, she is back to being passive doing only what the men tell her - her husband, her lover, mailman and even the bad guys all telling her what to do and she just blindly follows along not thinking for herself. She’s a scientist, analytical thinking should be her strong suit.
And to top it off, this feminist dystopian world is saved by... two men. Yep. TWO MEN save the world, despite there being several women who could have. Why? Whyyyyyy? In the end it is the husband of our main character who gets to save the world, be a martyr and die for his family. And what does our heroine Jean get? A happily ever after in Italy with the man of her dreams.
5/5 for eye rolls. 🙄
2.5/5 stars.