The good
- An interesting dystopian “future” (though, ironically, the book takes place in 2025, the same year I’m now reading it) where climate change has had negative effects (but not yet completely apocalyptic), inequality is rampant, many essential services are privatized (e.g., police, firefighters), and America has descended into a barbaric and violent state. This book was written in the 90s, and some of it feels prophetic, especially the presidential candidate promising to fix all the issues and take America “back” to its former glory, while stripping all regulations and giving corporations ever more power.
- A few interesting characters.
- A cool concept of people with “hyper-empathy.”
The not so good
- While some of the bleak future described in this book felt prophetic, the majority of it felt absurd. The book doesn’t provide a lot of clarity on what caused America to end up in such a barbaric state. There are hints dropped about climate change, the evils of capitalism, racism, drugs, and so on, but it felt wishy-washy, and not enough to topple the entire country. That said, it’s not even clear if the country has really collapsed, or if the “north” is still wealthy, and it’s just the “south” that’s struggling. Note that this isn’t the normal north/south divide: the south in this book is Southern California.
- The “earthseed” religious stuff was not particularly interesting to me.
- The story didn’t make much progress. I understand this was planned as a multi-book series, but it didn’t feel like enough happened in this book to continue reading the series (and as far as I understand, the author passed away before she could complete the series anyway).
