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3.77 AVERAGE
3.77 AVERAGE
The cover and the idea sounded so good!
But unfortunately it was not the book for me. In the end it got a little bit interesting but it was also the end. Would love if the book was a little bigger so that we found out the life after this all or more about Ana and how everything functions. The characters are cool but I have the feeling I just didn't get to know them that very good.
Such a shame because I think the story had potential.
Disney is taking over the world and it's kind of scary and a major reason for all this media fatigue I have. I'm not caught up on Star Wars. I'll never be caught up on Marvel. All these live action remakes are exhausting. So, like, a book about Evil Disney? Sure, they're 8/10ths of the way there, and the remaining goodness is the animation department plodding along developing really fascinating computer programs to make snow.
Mind, I didn't expect it to go quite so dark as it did, so now I'm not sure who I can recommend it to. I can't give it to Disney fans because they'll be upset, but if you don't like Disney I don't know why you'd spend the time getting into this one, with its one to one real world Disney park descriptions.
But. I devoured this book. I didn't want to put it down. I wanted to keep racing along through it, wanted to see what was around the next corner of the park. I truly wish there were more details about the park, about the events Ana had to do, about the places they had on offer. The ones I saw were simply astonishingly gorgeous and interesting and dangerous, but this was Ana's home, the place she had memorized, and I feel like we were only allowed a mere fraction of it to make room for the robot romance.
This bizarre instant attraction to Owen slows the plot. You've got to do a romance well for me to care, and this...instalove...doesn't stir my attention. Bleh. She describes her motor picking up speed when she sees him, like it's going to explode out her chest, and she can always pick him out of a crowd, and it does strange things to her electronics. Flirty human emotions, filtered through the pieces of my blender, feels clumsy and weird. The little zing of excitement in your nerves is replicated here with...sparks of literal electricity? I don't know, it's weird. It doesn't translate as well as Rothenberg needs it to. She does a nice job making Ana empathetic despite her alien robotics, but in the journey of making her feel more human she straddles this uncomfortable line of uncanny valley and hokey descriptions. The core of Ana's physicality did the novel no favors.
("what is this salt water coming from my eyes? tears? i don't know how to cry. i've never been programmed for this!" Ana, the water has to come from somewhere. Pretty sure salt water would destroy electronics so lord knows why they included that stuff in her anyway. She's got a lot of melodramatic internal monologues. I was kind of waiting for it to turn out she was really a human the whole time, but nah. what's she gonna do when her gears start winding down, anyway?)
Her family is large, but I don't actually know any of them except for Nia and (sort of) Eve: Kaia has some importance, but the rest especially are treated like the dolls they are: personality free and bland. I just crave more of them, and a little less of Ana's buzzing heart-motor.
The court transcripts and interjections from the trial keep the book's pace electric. Had we told the story straight, Ana's infatuation with Owen really would have felt insufferably tedious, but the questions and cliffhangers and uncertainty give this book a beautifully strong drive and focus and clarity. I'm incredibly grateful for how it's set up, for how it drags its readers by the hand and says, "And then you won't believe what happens next!" It's great.
And, again, the park itself is decadent and intricate and fascinating and feels like it could easily be a real place while still being entirely impossible. I love the little details, like the way the air smells in certain places to enhance the guests' interactions with the fantasy world. I just wanted more of it, that's all. I'm greedy. This place sounds awesome. I feel like it could have been utilized even more than it was--the only pieces that actually had any true bearing on the plot, other than the monorail, was the behind the scenes staff stuff like the utilidors and trash compactors and such, which feels like a missed opportunity. The stuff we did in the aquarium is what I mean. We need more scenes centered around and driven by their set pieces, since that's kind of what this book is: a series of set pieces.
The ending is nonsense. It feels completely unresolved. The moment we "catch up" to the plot post trial, the book goes off the monorail and tries to tie things together that didn't need to be tied together while still leaving it wide open with sequel bait in case it does well enough as a book for the publishers to ask for more. Frustratingly bad.
As far as morals about artificial intelligence and humanity go, I'm not sure this book does anything particularly new, but I love the consumerism aspect of it. The evil Disney part of it. The magic and mystery that hides such evil secrets. I just feel like it could have been pushed further. Rothenberg is a fine author and I'm curious to see what she'll do next--I just hope it takes full advantage of its scenario next time.
I'd read the next book if there was one.
Potential Spoiler...
As a parent ...I just keep feeling so bad for Owen's family!
The Kingdom is a strange blend of a sci-fi suspense and murder mystery book within a Disneyland-esue setting.
Firstly, let me introduce you to our two main characters:
Ana - white, the android princess known as a "Fantasist" who is becoming more self-aware, accused of murdering Owen and is put on trial
Owen - biracial (dad is American/white and mom is Vietnamese), works at the park as a maintenance worker
"…it’s fun to believe in fantasy. Stories can help people feel better about their own lives.”
The Kingdom was very easy to get into, but then my interest began to wane and the suspense quickly dwindled. By the last quarter, I became utterly disappointed. I would have found this book bearable, but then the author used a line that is regularly quoted in the show Westworld, which is: These violent delights have violent ends. This quote is not unique to the show because I believe it's attributed Shakespeare. However, it's use in this novel makes absolutely no sense. There was no context or reason for it.
“The way they take the truth and mild it into whatever form they choose as if sculpting a lump of clay. I’ve seen the park do it plenty of times, shape the truth however they prefer.”
What else doesn't make sense? The Westworld comparison. The Kingdom is a PG rated book with some dark undertones, but it's very obviously written for someone between the ages of 13-17. Westworld is an HBO show that has depictions of very graphic violence and repeated occurrences of rape throughout the entire first season. I could barely get through that show without having nightmares. It was harder to watch then Game of Thrones, if you can believe it. So I don't understand WTF Westworld is doing as a comp for a YOUNG ADULT novel.
Another issue I had was the insta-love, not because it existed, but because it was so poorly done that it was pretty unmemorable. Not to mention, there are like 120 loose ends an no indication of a follow-up novel or sequel. The only thing I can say I truly liked was the formatting of the book. It changes between past and present with an interview format much like Sleeping Giants and Illuminae.
“In the end, it does not matter what a story is about. It only matters who gets to tell it.”
I give The Kingdom 2.5 stars (and that's being generous).
Content Warning: physical abuse, animal violence (p. 52-54, p. 72), suicide, self-harm (p. 174, p. 317). Pedophilia (?) - I don't know exactly what age the android-hybrids are or resemble, but Owen lies to a character as part of a plan and tells him some of the Fantasists are going skinny dipping knowing he would watch the girls.
Rating Breakdown:
Writing - 2
Characters - 1
World-Building - 2
Plot - 2
Overall: 1.75/5
This book is what happens when you mix Westworld with Disneyland and then throw in a dash of murder mystery on a plate of awesome writing and yeah...you get the picture.
The writing and pov of Ana was really impressive. She is absolutely someone that I root for and yet, she constantly had this really inhuman feel to her voice. She would have these moments where she felt like a naive child and others where she was eerily ageless. I was never able to forget that Ana wasn't born human and that felt like a really compelling aspect all throughout. If she had just felt like any normal teenage princess, then the questions of whether or not she can love or have feelings at all that come into play in the book would have felt less interesting.
Which brings me to the story. This book had a really cool style that I loved. It goes back and forth between two times. One is Ana living her life in The Kingdom, talking and getting to know Owen; the other is after Ana is accused of murder and goes through different points of the trial and post-trial events. They worked really well together to build up the suspense. I was constantly on edge between what I was seeing and what the story was telling me. I was really drawn in, which is where the thriller aspects of the book come in. With any other book, I might have not had patience and given up, but this book definitely had me hooked in a way I didn't expect. That's probably I finished it in one night. There were also these little sections that threw in world-building context for some of the characters and ultimately, "The Kingdom" itself. While they did serve to world-build, they also managed to come in at just the time where it would be the creepiest. To be clear, this isn't a scary book, more a slow-burning thriller. It was pretty awesome, lol.
Besides that this book had a lot of really interesting themes surrounding morality, feminism, and the nature of freedom. It managed to feel like a book that had something to say without it taking over the book. It was brutal enough to feel real, but it never felt like it was a performance.
I just want to talk about the romance really quick and say that I didn't think I was going to love the relationship in this book. It takes a lot to wow me these days, but um..yeah. I was clutching my book reading this. I shed some tears at really intense moments between these two. There was just so much good angst here that I really enjoyed. It really made the stakes of the novel come through really well. Everything felt bigger and more important because you get to really love Owen.
TL;DR There were a lot of elements to this book that mixed really well into this perfect sci-fi whodunit with a hint of fantasy aesthetic. I suggest you come for the theme park sci-fi aspect and you say to find out what the heck happened!!!