'Bellwether' by Connie Willis
'Bellwether' by Connie Willis

The good

  • A few fun, unique characters with great personalities.

  • Decent sense of humor. It’s not laugh-out-loud funny, but it’ll definitely get you to smile and smirk, and it’s fun to discuss with friends.

  • A great taste of the 90s and, more generally, of the fads that this book focuses on. The management at fads at Hi-Tek are especially funny, and reminiscent of Office Space.

  • The central idea of the idea is intriguing. What causes fads? The answer is pretty clever too: bellwethers. As in, if you look at a flock of sheep, it’s typically led by a bellwether, a certain sheep who is largely indistinguishable from the others, but perhaps is just a little greedier and a little faster. People tend to unknowingly follow bellwhethers too—just like sheep.

The not so good

  • This book is categorized as science fiction, so for a large portion of the book, I kept expecting some wild sci fi thing to appear: aliens, mind control, fancy technology, whatever. But it never really does. It really is a book about fads and the technology doesn’t go beyond the 90s.

  • Some of the characters are perhaps a little bit too cartoony.

Rating: 4 stars