Beatrix Lo

Amazing Book ; Weird Reviews

Revisado: 09-20-23

If you have disabilities, or if you've known someone who has had to see 3 specialists to get a diagnosis they guessed on their own before even getting their first referral... If you had to lose days of work to get said diagnosis... If you can't afford to take an ambulance to the hospital in an emergency... If you have ever been hut with a single "surprise fee" because you are sick and, OBVIOUSLY, it isn't your fault... If you've had to wait months to get HRT etc etc etc... this book is more than for you.

The tone is snarky and playful and well done. This is probably the greatest satire of the healthcare-industrial complex of our century- and that's an easy title and bar to set seeing that there isn't much of it.

There really isn't much humor unless you like to laugh at heavy, familiar situations. It is incredibly "Juvenalian" and gut wrenching. The book itself seems upset with profiteering healthcare models. This is what I don't understand about the reviews here and on Goodreads. It almost feels like an agenda.

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second book when?

Revisado: 09-20-23

I hope audible decides to publish an audio version of the second book soon! it's hard to find good "hard" scifi these days...

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Bio Hard Scifi Forever

Revisado: 02-01-22

🎼 We are li-ving
In a microbian world
Brought over
By mycopian girls 🎶

That's the kind of fever dream-type lyrics I hear in my head when my focus is invested in the world in this story. Somehow, it doesn't clash with the sometimes horrifying , often "noir" images showing alongside the music Tade Thompson orchestrates here. Sometimes the images and the lyricism trade places, too‐ like when considering for the first time in one's life the nasty shit that happens to animals when we die, and thus, the nasty shit that might happen when aliens die for the first time in your life... Because, naturally, not many people talk about this.

It's refreshing to see scifi focus more on other sciences outside of physics. These days I feel like they're in a bit of a slump and so have sold out once again to maniacal multi millionaires while bashing on us biologists because we are once again, somehow supririsingly, relevant in these times... Because who cares about studying life as a living thing. This, despite designing the world's first functioning biobots in history last year, people are somehow more excited for the potential to live on a rusty rock desert where life could have never possibly existed in the millions of years the planet itself has existed, because that would, once again, not make physicists the center of the multi-millionaire universe. Because it's not like learning how a planet allowed for life to exist at all via conditions of the past, and thus the possibilities inherent to our existence, could help anyone at all.

But I digress.

Fungus is always a good way to represent the outwardly chaotic interconnectedness between "life", "nonlife", and the various membranes that keep us attached to one another- in this case, what those in colonized and colonizer nations are now referring to as a Metaverse of sorts... Something like AR, often times as distracting as VR when it comes to the sense of sight, and as honed by Sensitives, insight...

Speaking of colonizers who could never possibly ponder that there are oppressors in the Third World, or even Nigeria, too (yes, that's a pro-Fourth Worldism plug):

In this story, the xenoverse is spreading as a living fungus from space, and some people are better at logging into it than others. Most people can't log in at all. In fact, Amerika has a great firewall of sorts to ban Mycoverse; now everyone thinks Amerikans want to do bad things. Nothing has changed, and so that's not a spoiler, unless you don't read the news and never history, which is understandable but sad.

Then, there's Wormwood, which makes my heart flutter though I don't know why. Wormwood lives underground as mychorrizal system of sorts, with fruiting bodies and all. Very charming person, unlike young Kaaro who becomes loveable with age in a different way than he was before.

Kaaro is one of the people who can log onto the Inter‐*cough* AHEM sorry I mean XENOSPHERE easily. Because the Xenosphere's ethernet cables are basically the Xenoforms that are in a lot of people's lungs by now (depending on situational context), he has a lot of access to their desires and senses, as well as memories . This is where Tade shines, AS WELL; He displays the various, ever-shifting flavors of peoples' psyches, down to taxi drivers and sex workers, with such intuitive cool I can't help but feel that I'm going to be exposed next. He does so in ways that make my brain want to see cyberpunk but feel fantasy. I imagine this is the kind of world Siri passed through to get between thd Witcher universe and Cyberpunk 2077. The two moods meld into each other like minds on mushrooms. No, I will not stop pushing the mycolean agenda.

I would recommend this book to people who enjoyed Dark Forest by Cixin Liu for the big ideas, Perfect Blue for investigation into the psyche as personable characterization, those who enjoyed the character development in Bush Mama, and those who are tired of the Physics to Space Pollution Stan Industrial Complex.

I want to keep writing a review on this but it's 4AM and I should really get to bed. To be comtinued.

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esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

romance

Revisado: 02-25-18

a lot of "male" gaze bit perfect narration and beautiful story... sort of anti soviet, very pro bolshevik

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did not read

Revisado: 07-11-17

do not love it. would like books on decolonization instead of white literature please and thanks.

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Terrifying

Revisado: 03-07-16

This book should fit well under horror for those who can picture details within this audiobook. Filled with twists stretched out so wide you won't know where it's turning. The narrqtive voice remains extremely reliable although they often interject with opinions. Preparing to watch the movie as I type this.

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