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pilebythebed's review
2.0
Timing is everything. Lawrence Wright’s The End of October, about a global pandemic, was released as Covid restrictions were starting to bite. As the pandemic in that novel was much more deadly, it put our current crisis into perspective. Last year also saw Carol Stivers’ The Mother Code in which the world pretty much ended due to a man-made pandemic. There are probably plenty of others. And now, coming at the tail end of Covid-19 is Sue Burke’s Immunity Index. Mainly written pre-Covid but centring, at least in its early going, around a deadly, fast moving covid-style disease which may not, as it turns out, be completely natural. And there are clones.
Immunity Index is a five minutes in the future book which imagines an ongoing Trump-like presidency. The hyper-nationalist leader is called “The Prez” throughout and comes up with the concept of putting up a flag to combat the spread of what he calls the Sino-Cold. Now, if this was written before the first half of 2020, Burke has shown some world class prescience as to how a Trump-led government would respond to a growing Covid threat. But her premise goes further, into dangerous territory of the President ordering the creation and release of an airborne vaccine, a move that does not go well.
But the plot actually focusses on three young women who, it turns out very early in the piece, are clones of each other. In this new United States, genetically modified humans, including clones, are second class citizens and known by the derogatory term “dupes”. They are second class because the ruling religious right believes that clones cannot have souls. All three are involved in a coming wave of protests against the current government known as the “mutiny”, a movement that is put back on its heels as the new strain of Covid starts to bite. There is a fourth POV character – Peng, a geneticist who created the clones and is now working to try and stop the current outbreak.
There is a lot going on in Immunity Index. Actually too much. And reader’s patience may depend on how much they are interested in even reading pandemic-related thrillers at the moment. Much of the first half of the novel is concerned with set-up of character and situation. So that while there appears to be some plot, most is taken up really pushing exposition and the rest is polemic dressed up as action as the “mutiny” gains momentum, aimed at an even more extreme form of Trumpian autocracy (although one that was not hard to imagine). Burke does not do enough to make readers care about side characters as they start dying from the pandemic. Or even to really care too much about the protagonists as they navigate finding out that they were not who they thought they were and a world that is swiftly going to hell. Which made Immunity Index occasionally interesting but never really engaging.
Immunity Index is a five minutes in the future book which imagines an ongoing Trump-like presidency. The hyper-nationalist leader is called “The Prez” throughout and comes up with the concept of putting up a flag to combat the spread of what he calls the Sino-Cold. Now, if this was written before the first half of 2020, Burke has shown some world class prescience as to how a Trump-led government would respond to a growing Covid threat. But her premise goes further, into dangerous territory of the President ordering the creation and release of an airborne vaccine, a move that does not go well.
But the plot actually focusses on three young women who, it turns out very early in the piece, are clones of each other. In this new United States, genetically modified humans, including clones, are second class citizens and known by the derogatory term “dupes”. They are second class because the ruling religious right believes that clones cannot have souls. All three are involved in a coming wave of protests against the current government known as the “mutiny”, a movement that is put back on its heels as the new strain of Covid starts to bite. There is a fourth POV character – Peng, a geneticist who created the clones and is now working to try and stop the current outbreak.
There is a lot going on in Immunity Index. Actually too much. And reader’s patience may depend on how much they are interested in even reading pandemic-related thrillers at the moment. Much of the first half of the novel is concerned with set-up of character and situation. So that while there appears to be some plot, most is taken up really pushing exposition and the rest is polemic dressed up as action as the “mutiny” gains momentum, aimed at an even more extreme form of Trumpian autocracy (although one that was not hard to imagine). Burke does not do enough to make readers care about side characters as they start dying from the pandemic. Or even to really care too much about the protagonists as they navigate finding out that they were not who they thought they were and a world that is swiftly going to hell. Which made Immunity Index occasionally interesting but never really engaging.
rocketiza's review against another edition
3.0
Uses a young adult structure but written actually respecting the reader's intelligence.
scottpm's review
4.0
A brutal classic sci-fi retelling of 2020. Sci-fi is meant to challenge you and sometimes make you feel uncomfortable. This hit the mark.
grid's review against another edition
3.0
It would have been pretty easy to give this a pass if I’d picked it up at a bookstore... not that I’ve been in a bookstore in the last year. As it was, I’d pre-ordered this on the strength of the author’s other two books, and was completely blind-sided that it was about a pandemic much like the one we’re living through, AND includes a political climate that feels tailored to be the consequence of the Trump presidency.
I very reluctantly read the first chapter and got sucked in by the interesting characters.
Maybe 1/3rd of the way through, I joked with my wife that I probably couldn’t have read this book before Biden was elected. And my recent vaccination also helped.
But it is a compelling read, and I ended up staying up relatively late (even for me) to finish it in only 3 days.
I can’t say I loved it, but it was written very well and has a plenty satisfying ending. (At least for the main characters.) I do hope the author returns to alien landscapes in her next novel, however.
I very reluctantly read the first chapter and got sucked in by the interesting characters.
Maybe 1/3rd of the way through, I joked with my wife that I probably couldn’t have read this book before Biden was elected. And my recent vaccination also helped.
But it is a compelling read, and I ended up staying up relatively late (even for me) to finish it in only 3 days.
I can’t say I loved it, but it was written very well and has a plenty satisfying ending. (At least for the main characters.) I do hope the author returns to alien landscapes in her next novel, however.
jesscoil's review
adventurous
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
3.5
jazzypizzaz's review against another edition
3.0
Held my close attention the entire time, unfolding with an intense action-oriented plot, and I felt connected to the characters. In particular I found the specificity of Nike's experience at her car job oddly satisfying. The novel's premise is, of course, a bit too close for comfort! and of the pandemic books I've read, quite obvious that this one was informed by 2020, but in a way that serves the fictional world and story, not in a cheap way. What knocks down my rating is that it doesn't really seem to come together in a satisfying way in the end, no cathartic climatic revelatory moments in the way it needed & that I was waiting for, tying the various threads together.
jerseygrrrl's review against another edition
Burke started this book way before covid began, but it's too close to reality to make easy reading. I tried hard, but wasn't in the right frame of mind to read about a delta coronavirus devastating an increasingly fascist United States. If only this book had been published two years earlier or two years later... DNF for now, but I'll try again in a few years.
sambucuscanadensis's review against another edition
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0