Rating: 3.5 stars
I really love dystopian/sci-fi, and Virginia Johnson's books are always very interesting, so I jumped at the chance to read this one. First of all, the premise is really wonderful. There are an unknown number of subjects in some sort of biodome that appears to be run entirely by AI. They wake every day with an objective/choice and have the entire place to themselves. There are different environments within the biodome, and everything appears to be self sustaining, but the subjects can presumably be as involved as they want with taking care of plants and animals. It is mentioned a few times that procreation is one of the goals of this setup, although the subjects in the book do not encounter each other within the biodome (so maybe it's based on insemination?). They are humanity's last hope, and the Kepler project (which is written about in another great book by Ms. Johnson) is mentioned to have failed.
There were a few things that I was very confused about that made it difficult to fully appreciate this book.
SPOILERS
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The torture scenes specifically were confusing. The story starts out with the main character (John) performing some sort of gruesome surgery on a woman (she ends up being the other main character Jane). There is never any reasoning behind this. It's kind of a cruel and seemingly useless surgery, and the AI or whoever is running the place brings the woman back to life day after day to be tortured again. The subjects are apparently essentially immortal, so John tries to kill himself over and over. Then at the end, he is doing surgery and actually ends up doing an abortion on the woman's baby, even though there was never any indication she was pregnant. Then somehow he believes it was just a trick at the end. I really just don't understand the purpose. Also, one of the things I was having a hard time understanding was this "choice" they kept talking about. At first I thought it was the choice to procreate. I couldn't tell if John had resisted for 97 days, and that was why they were still there, or if he agreed and he was still confined. It was more clear that Jane said "yes" to whatever question was being asked, but her conditions of captivity were the same, except that she was the one being tortured in the evenings. I was a little frustrated that those basic elements of the book never really came together and made sense to me. SPOILERS END
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This book has such a promising setup, and the worldbuilding is excellent. I wonder if I got an unedited copy though. If some of the basic story elements were a little clearer, I would have enjoyed it more. I will probably still read book two because I am hoping some of my questions will be answered.
Purchase on Amazon here
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