Reviews

how did they get there? why were they subjected to an unusual schedule? These women were from different countries, which ones? And they all spoke the same language? Why were there others? Why were men and women kept separate? How did the others die? What triggered the siren? Which planet were they on? How was there someone else’s home? How was there electricity?

I wouldn’t call this dystopian since all we know is bad, and for no reason. The characters were monotonous, they were given names and a disease or a previous profession and/or a short history of their previous relationships. Despite being named, they were objects that pushed forward the plot, which also did not develop much. Their dynamics were almost non existent. the main character should have an interesting perspective, being the only person who has no recollection of the previous world and has grown up in the bunker only hearing stories of how it used to be. But there were no details of her childhood, or after, how she gradually acquired knowledge about the past. her revelations/ discoveries seemed unbelievable. Other women had told her things that she later pieced together to reach a conclusion, but they were all introduced retrospectively (

she knew an armchair when she saw one based on what others had told her, ofc it “took her a while to figure it out” but she had knowledge on furniture was not specified

). I simply find it unconvincing that the narrator was cold and disliked physical touch due to being in the bunker, and that 39 women were all indifferent and could not give her any care to make her feel differently about the world; at least it was not fleshed out enough to persuade me. The tone, which the afterword described as cooling, did not appeal to me or seemed special at all. The ending also dragged on— for a message that could’ve been clarified much earlier