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elenafrancesca 's review for:

Womb City by Tlotlo Tsamaase
2.0

There are some great ideas in this book, but there are also too many ideas in this book. The transhumanism is such a fascinating trope to explore, but it isn't well explored here unfortunately. The author also over explains everything, showing and telling at every turn. An example would be, a character sees the ghost (yes, there is a ghost...) before they get killed, then the ghost explicitly states "you can only see me before you get killed." Like,  yes, I gathered that from context. Or another example, "our affair is killing people" after reading 300 pages of people dying as a result of their affair. 

There are so many interesting ideas that are not well fleshed out. Transhumanism, bodily autonomy, infertility, misogyny, AI, sexual assault, motherhood, gender identity, racism, the corruption inherent to capitalism and so so so much more. I think if it was trimmed down and cleaned up this has a lot of potential. If it stuck with the concept of re-uploading consciousness into new bodies after death and how certain bodies hold more social value that would have been great, it touches on this but doesn't flesh it out very well because it doesn't focus on it. It could have been an excellent discussion on how we as a society place value on certain types of people, and value other bodies less.  

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