Reading this felt like it was just constantly attempting to go to the furthest point just to freak me out - because it's so "edgy" you see? It felt like the mental equivalent of talking with someone who Insists their favorite "dark" film is "A Serbian Film" (extreme content warning if you don't know what it's about).

It had such an interesting concept but the entire novel kind of fell flat in an attempt to constantly one-up itself with how "dark" it could get, rather than actually looking into the themes it tried to have. The main character is an unlikeable man who assaults a woman to "break" her, and the entire sequence had absolutely no point to it to justify it's inclusion. However this didn't even throw me because everything that happened up until that point had the same emotional impact - nothing.

The synopsis made it seem like him treating the woman he has as a person instead of food would slowly show her humanity and him working to change the world he works in or changing how he sees it, but (spoilers) the "intelligence" of the woman was the same the entire time and felt more like trying to teach a cow how to live, rather than a person. In a way, it legitimately made it seem like the people being bred and consumed WERE somehow less than human and deserved it, and in doing so kind of made the horror of the concept not really work. They're not people, they're animals who happen to Look like people.

The ending also just made the entire novel feel pointless, like what's the point of the entire time he is questioning the morality of the world he lives in - to the point of hating his sister for her not doing so as well - JUST for him to decide that it's fine, actually and he's happy to do what everyone else does.

ALSO the entire idea that the virus affecting the animals was faked, to the point where it's explicitly stated to not exist and the entire thing was created to "control overpopulation" by somehow getting every country in the world to agree on it and implement it immediately? Kind of makes me question how the author feels about Covid-19. (Even if this was written beforehand it's Very conspiracy-heavy so I feel my point stands).

And I'm not even going to bother going in-depth with the fairly racist descriptions of any character described by the main "protagonist," or that I very much got the vibe that this was the novel equivalent of those vegan "documentaries" on the "horror of how animals are treated" that the person doing so has never spoken to one single farmer or slaughterhouse employee before making.

Mostly I would just have liked someone who could gives this concept justice had written this. I'm just glad it was on KI so I didn't have to pay for it.