Womb City is a book that is a lot of things all in one. Initially steeping the reader in a futuristic dystopia veiled as a crime-free utopia and evolving into a sci-fi thriller full of escalating tension and shocking reveals. Nestled at its center are fantastical strokes of cultural folklore and spirituality. The book deals heavily with themes of bodily autonomy, sacrifice, and who bears the cost of “security”.
### World / Setting
Womb City takes place in a futuristic imagining of the city of Gaborone, Botswana. In the city—and seemingly around the world to some degree—lifespans are infinitely extendable through consciousness transfers to new bodies. However, in the process of transitioning to a new body, the person’s memories of their previous life are lost, giving them a clean slate but also an untethered start to life. Programs exist to help the person integrate into their new life, and the person can opt into integrating with the body’s existing family.
An AI monitors citizens and tests them for “criminality”. Citizens found likely to commit crimes are dealt with in various ways, most notably through forced extraction from their body. Bodies with a history of criminality are lower-value, as well as bodies that have disabilities or a history of other issues.
The commodification of bodies is sufficiently horrific in itself, but some bodies are also subjected to microchipping, which gives the AI systems direct access to the person’s vision, thoughts, and nervous system. Microchipped bodies are disproportionately female, and criminality is also disproportionately identified in female bodies, which subsequently means female bodies are heavily microchipped and policed, and frequently tested for “purity”.
All this surveillance buys the city a reportedly crime-free security, in which women don’t have to fear being victimized walking down the street at night. The irony, of course, is that they are victimized constantly by the very system that purports to provide that security.
### Characters
We follow Nelah, a microchipped woman who is a successful and award-winning architect, married to a high ranking official in the police force. Nelah is the third consciousness to inhabit her body, and is microchipped due to the previous consciousness committing an unspecified crime and being evicted from the body. Nelah struggles with infertility, having had several miscarriages and a recent stillbirth. She resents the body she was given for being flawed and unable to carry a pregnancy to term, as well as subjecting her to the lack of privacy that comes with constant AI “purity” exams of the microchip. Her husband, Elifasi, is a volatile asshole who is essentially the summation of all worst red flags of every r/relationships post.
There are no “pure” heroes in this story; it is filled with characters who are morally shades of grey, often self-interested and corrupt. I’m not sure having some hero in this world would make any sense, honestly, and the characters, while sometimes frustrating and somewhat offputting in some of their actions, are intentionally crafted and incredibly effective at leading the reader to the thematic questions of the text through their very existence in the world.
### Plot
The style of the plot evolves over the course of the book, sci-fi dystopia to sci-fi thriller to fantasy with a healthy dose of body horror. Events escalate from simple interrogation of this world, to a propulsive mystery-thriller uncovering corruption and nefarious characters at ever greater heights.
The blurb reveals that things kick off after Nelah hits a girl while driving intoxicated. Prior to this inciting event, the pace is fairly slow, an exploration of the traumas of living in Nelah’s body in this world and the fraught relationships she is involved in. It is often difficult to read and significant pagetime serves to set up many of the worldbuilding details which are then built upon as the pace picks up.
### Personal Thoughts
There’s a lot about this book that made me uncomfortable in the reading process, and I think that’s fully the intention of the text and it’s incredibly successful in achieving it. I struggled sometimes to engage with the theme of bodily autonomy taken to the extremes as it was here. The story rather explicitly asks the reader to question their perception of security, to inquire about the cost to achieve it and who pays that price.
While I don’t always dislike morally-gray characters, they aren’t necessarily my favorite, and sometimes the decisions these characters made frustrated me. In the context of this narrative though, the morally gray characters made me question my distaste and I think were very effective in proving the point that, there is no threshold of likability required or actions that a person can take that would make them “deserving” of the situation thrust upon them in this world. That said, one nitpick I had was in some of the characters doing rather surprising 180s in their attitudes that felt contrived to me.
The narrative escalates in pace and plot reveals significantly after the halfway point, and I found myself a bit disengaged due to reveal fatigue and the chaotic nature of the climax. I think a reader who enjoys thrillers or that feeling of layers being peeled back would likely enjoy this more than I did, as I tend to not be much of a thriller reader.
Overall, it was a emotionally intense read that left me thinking a lot about my reactions to the characters and events. It is well-crafted and written with engaging first-person POV.
### Recommended Audience
Readers who enjoy themes of bodily autonomy and a feminist lens into dystopia.
Readers who can get behind messy, morally-gray characters who are doing their best, not always for the right reasons but always with radical action.
Readers who like the thriller style of reveals upon reveals for a mind-bending and exciting conclusion.
