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A review by oleksandr
Elysium by Jennifer Marie Brissett
2.0
This is a SF novel that from the start strongly reminds you of the Matrix. It was nominated for Locus Award for Best First Novel (2015) and won Philip K. Dick Award for Special Citation (2015).
The few first pages show us a pair that replay their relations again and again, the pieces are interjected with machine’s output, reporting about errors and attempts to restore data. The pair, Antoin(-e) and Adrian(-ne) from piece to piece shift their genders, so they are: a married couple, whose love burned out; a gay couple, where one is gravely ill; a lesbian pair, where one is ill and pregnant, etc, etc. There are some glimpses of the unnatural, like an elk or owl, suddenly appearing in the city, so only a single person notes them. As story develops, with longer passages (still broke by a computer’s output) we get to know better the protagonists (much better than they know themselves, because episodes seem unlinked) and the world around, as it moves toward apocalypse (not a spoiler, it is in the book’s back). The roles continue to shift to that of brothers and parent-offspring…
While the premise is quite interesting the SF elements weren’t well thought out. The idea to have the same pieces repeated over and over again in different environments reminded me of [b:The Soft Machine|23937|The Soft Machine (The Nova Trilogy #1)|William S. Burroughs|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388756111l/23937._SY75_.jpg|2320862].
The few first pages show us a pair that replay their relations again and again, the pieces are interjected with machine’s output, reporting about errors and attempts to restore data. The pair, Antoin(-e) and Adrian(-ne) from piece to piece shift their genders, so they are: a married couple, whose love burned out; a gay couple, where one is gravely ill; a lesbian pair, where one is ill and pregnant, etc, etc. There are some glimpses of the unnatural, like an elk or owl, suddenly appearing in the city, so only a single person notes them. As story develops, with longer passages (still broke by a computer’s output) we get to know better the protagonists (much better than they know themselves, because episodes seem unlinked) and the world around, as it moves toward apocalypse (not a spoiler, it is in the book’s back). The roles continue to shift to that of brothers and parent-offspring…
While the premise is quite interesting the SF elements weren’t well thought out. The idea to have the same pieces repeated over and over again in different environments reminded me of [b:The Soft Machine|23937|The Soft Machine (The Nova Trilogy #1)|William S. Burroughs|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388756111l/23937._SY75_.jpg|2320862].