“Comfort is dangerous. It is the illusion that nothing will ever change even when things are changing constantly right in front of you.”————————-
I’m not sure this book will be for everyone but I thought it was very clever. It’s right on the level with your more unusual dystopian books: Tender is the Flesh, Vox and Devolution. It presents us with an alternate history that begins in the early 1900s. It imagines a 40 year war called The Great Reckoning that obliterates the population and leaves many children orphaned.
We follow Miriam who starts off as one of these orphans and through the years she finds herself in a commune and then a prison. In these environments she becomes interested in the psychology of trauma and becomes a preeminent specialist as the new government tries to find a way to rebuild that will avoid future wars. Her theories to help children overcome the trauma of losing parents become standard practice in the new government where people are kept from forming familial bonds and therefore reducing the violence that comes from protecting those bonds. As time goes on, Miriam begins to wonder if her techniques are actually helpful for humanity.
I loved the way this story unraveled through Miriam’s manuscript and how scientific the story was. I will say the progression is quite slow and there’s more of a sense of foreboding than a lot of action. It’s definitely not as much of a page turner as the dystopians that I mentioned earlier but it does really make you think and I really enjoyed the originality of the plot. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
What’s your favorite dystopian?
openmypages 