Reviews

Q by Christina Dalcher

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chai_reading's review against another edition

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dark emotional tense medium-paced

4.0

adahl311's review against another edition

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dark reflective medium-paced

2.75

saracox's review

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4.0

I think at some point (probably as a teenager) everyone has thought "what if we just got rid of all the stupid people?" This book takes that thought and makes it a distopian reality. Based not too far into the future, society has become a hierarchical system based on Q scores. What you can do and have depends purely on this score. A woman who helped develop this system finds herself stuck when her youngest daughter gets a score so low that she gets shipped off to a boarding school. This is a really interesting read, that I really enjoyed. It was scaringly close to home, and seemed completely feesible if the wrong people came into power. The reason this was given only 4 and not 5 stars was because if kind the beginnings of this system infeesible. It began with a groups of pupils putting it within the school system, which other schools adopted. Working in a school myself, I can't believe that such obvious discrimination would be allowed and then become national school policy. Other than this one aspect of the narrative, I found it all very interesting. Including all the scientific and historic referneces.

lindsirae's review against another edition

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3.0

Fun read but ultimately a typical BS liberal fantasy - one Very Special White Woman brings down an entire corrupt system through the magic of…the Washington Post? It was weirdly paced, too, and the ending didn’t punch nearly hard enough. Oh well!

carter84's review

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4.0

I'm a sucker for dystopian books and Q gripped me from the very beginning. I find interesting that in reviews a lot of users found the story a bit too far fetched, when in my personal opinion this actually sounds far too plausible. In certain countries people from specific backgrounds (cultural and economical) are already at huge disadvantage when it comes to education and eugenics is a nasty idea that keeps reappearing through history.
If I were to complain I'd say that the setting in the mid-part of the book is perhaps a bit wasted, but it's a minor blemish on an otherwise really solid book.