160 pages
English language
Published Feb. 20, 2021 by Doherty Associates, LLC, Tom.
The symbolism is a metaphor for capitalism because after eating the plot, the characters and the setting it ate itself.
I like this one. There's a lot of pain in this story, and also lightness. It got a little too fairytale-ish for my taste at one point, but oooh, the ending. Mhm. The audiobook is very well read too.
While an entertaining story, it failed to grab me. It started off strong, but then wandered about without ever reaching a climax or resolution, leaving me wondering what the point of any of it was. It's mostly a narrative summary of events as the main character goes through her (admittedly bizarre) life. While horrible things happen to and around her, she doesn’t seem to be all that shaken by those events. The events are drily relayed and labelled. We don’t learn much of what truly motivates her, why she makes the choices she makes. Honestly, we don’t learn much of anything that’s going on in this story, just that it’s going on.
This title did not meet my expectations in several ways. For one, it’s quite steeply priced. For the price of a big fat novel, what I got was a novella. Second, it is marketed as science fiction, but …
While an entertaining story, it failed to grab me. It started off strong, but then wandered about without ever reaching a climax or resolution, leaving me wondering what the point of any of it was. It's mostly a narrative summary of events as the main character goes through her (admittedly bizarre) life. While horrible things happen to and around her, she doesn’t seem to be all that shaken by those events. The events are drily relayed and labelled. We don’t learn much of what truly motivates her, why she makes the choices she makes. Honestly, we don’t learn much of anything that’s going on in this story, just that it’s going on.
This title did not meet my expectations in several ways. For one, it’s quite steeply priced. For the price of a big fat novel, what I got was a novella. Second, it is marketed as science fiction, but there was very little science in it. Last but not least, there were various inconsistencies or contrived circumstances that undermined my suspension of disbelief.
What it has going for it is the scenery. It’s a different setting than the majority of books, and that alone made it worth reading. That and the strong start. If the rest of the novella had delivered on the strong beginning, this might have developed into a four or five star story. I did enjoy reading it but I wasn’t as blown away as the hype around this title had me hoping for.
This is a book with a mysterious deadly super power, within a future Africa, beset by corrupt corporations.
This book is about a young girl navigating this world.
The writing is beautiful. The coming of age aspects of the story are often tragic. Some plot elements felt a bit disjointed, especially for a novella. I liked the journey; the destination otoh, not as much. Would check out the author's other works.
I would have liked for this story to have gone more into the how and why, but I also understand the author's reluctance to do so. This was powerfully written, and had only bad things to say about human nature. I feel like it was written from the perspective of 2020. (Even the pandemic got a shout-out!)
I won't spoil it here, but... that ending was... brutal.
