“In brief, there is little so bad in this book that would not be righted with a little decent workshopping and revising. As it is, it feels like someone who has read far too much bad genre-fiction took on the task of imitation ​”

I wish I could like this book. I like to support newer writers. And the story conceitIn literature, allowing a metaphor or unexpected comparison ... More has potential. (Full disclosure that I acquired the audio version of this book in a giveaway.) But I can’t favor this.

First, the positive. Straus, when she wants to, does a fairly solid job of handling action sequences and suspenseful moments. The basic premise of the novel, too, is interesting: if we can modify our humanity, should we? Can we “fix ourselves?” When the novel (far too infrequently) focused on the sf questions, it was a solid inquiry from the perspective of the young 20-somethings engaged in the issue.

Unfortunately, the writing is severely marred in two areas. First, Straus has done too little reflection, it seems, on her science future: the book feels very much like the events are occurring today save for a few techie doodads and a slapped on caste division between the wealthy and the over-wroughtly-titled Proles. Outside of a few tech items with the prefix “holo-” dabbed on them, internal “com implants,” and the titular tech that works as a behavior modifier (but very sinister), little has changed in 100 odd years. What future history we are offered seems stretched and generalized to account for what we do see. We end up with a future “club scene” where all adults except “Authority” (government agents) are not coincidentally completely absent.

More on this same count, it’s worth saying that this book is much more a romance novel than one of science fiction. The male heartthrob is predictably a jackass to our protagonist at first, but does manage to flex his arm muscles in the second sentence of description. From there, far more time and description is spent resolving the very-obvious “love” story than is spared for the larger conflict, right down to backgrounding the entire plot at the book’s end so that two or more chapters (I lost count) could be spared for the two of them gazing at each other’s bodies and gushing about the sacrifices for love. (The world-devouring plot conflict, however, is finally resolved in an epilog of sorts.) Let me be honest: I absolutely loathe formula fiction.

Even if this were not enough, the writing style is itself difficult to swallow. This may be in part due to the mostly-robotic reading of Arielle DeLisle (and so I recommend reading it rather than listening, regardless), but when by the second chapter the characters traded 1-2 word sentences back and forth, each followed by a “she chirped,” “he chimed in,” “she screeched,” etc. I was almost ready to believe the book was meant as parody. Our fingernail chewing protagonist (the only behavior she ever ever does without second-guessing herself for a paragraph or two) is given precious little motivation for her principles and risk-taking until Straus literally decides to make some reasons up for her at the end of the book: did she never wrestle with her issues before this, or does Straus just not like revision?

It’s too bad. In brief, there is little so bad in this book that would not be righted with a little decent workshopping and revising. As it is, it feels like someone who has read far too much bad genre-fiction took on the task of imitation and couldn’t be spared the time to work seriously on crafting a worthwhile story.