I don’t think I’ve ever experienced the whiplash of feelings towards a book as I’ve had with this one… What the actual fuck. 

Until the last 15-20% of it, I was convinced it was going to be a 5-star read, and possibly my favourite of the year so far. I loved: 

- The Britishness of it all, which isn’t hugely common in sci-fi. 

- The “after it turned out their Chancellor had a pig-related adventure at university” jab at Cameron. 

- The valid swing at America – “giant national disasters were just what happened in countries governed by gibbering religious extremists”. 

- The way Pulley incorporated linguistic ideas into the story (I don’t know how accurate those facts/theories were). Every time they were mentioned, the felt like a true addition to the story, rather than being an obvious author-insert to show off their knowledge (*cough cough* R.F. Kuang). If Babel had been written by Pulley, I might have been able to finish it at least. 

- The MAMMOTHS. 

- The characters and their relationships in general. They all felt really natural and authentic, at least when the politics was taken out of it. 

I did have a couple of gripes, one being that Pulley decided to give the Head of Security and a dog such similar names (Sasha and KASHA?). I kept getting them confused while reading. 

There was also a weird and OBVIOUS continuity error towards the end, where January is in prison and “Gale came to see him every week”, yet on the very next page Gale says January had “only been here a week.” So how long had it actually been?? 

I wish I could say those were my only two problems with the book. In fact, in a vacuum, without the context of the real world, this would have been a really enjoyable read. Unfortunately, the real-life implications of the themes in this novel are too egregious to ignore. 

There are already a lot of great reviews going into close detail about all the issues in this novel, so I’ll just outline my biggest red flags for my own record keeping. 

The worst thing for me was that the left-wing guy was a lunatic psychopath, and the right-wing guy was the loveliest person you ever did meet. Right until the last 15-20%, I thought Gale was being coerced into having right-wing policies, and there was going to be a reveal that showed he was actually a good person after all. When it became clear this wasn’t going to be the case, the gears really started turning for me, and the novel was shown to me in a new light. 

I would have been perfectly happy if the message of the book was that all political leaders have the capacity to be horrible people, but are able to learn from their mistakes/other people. But this wasn’t the case. Left was bad, right was good. End of. 

It’s also COMPLETELY unrealistic to me that someone as thoughtful and willing to change as Gale would ever be right-wing. No-one can be that kind in their personal life, then go about spouting as much hate as the right do. Again, this was one of the things that lulled me into a false sense of security about Pulley’s intentions and beliefs. 

And one of the ‘good things’ that happened at the end was that Earthstrongers gave their cage keys to other people. How is locking someone inside their cage going to make ANYTHING better? Mad thing to try and show as a good outcome. 

The gender stuff, which I was excited to learn about when I first started reading, also gives some pretty dodgy vibes. Not least Pulley comparing Gale’s reaction to January calling a kid “he” to that of as if “January had smacked a stack of pornography in front of them”. Sounds like a dog whistle if I’ve ever heard one. 

Either Pulley is a right-wing terf, or she’s completely naïve to how her writing comes across. Neither of which is good.  

In her author’s note, Pulley says: 

And now I know why.