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A review by dame_samara
Inhuman by Valérie Mangin, Denis Bajram
2.0
This book at its core is about Colonization. Colonization of peoples and organic spaces. In the end I was left like this book was justifying it. Which left me feeling icky afterwards.
Below this is Spoilers:
Let's start with the attitudes to the people.
These people crash land on a planet, and judge these people as savages, at no point showing respect for these people or the lives they live. Instead they say things like they will teach them to live with dignity, and judge their practices. Even when they find people who aren't 'worshipping' The Great One. It still didn't feel like they treated these people as equals.
Then there is The Great One a sapient being who lived on this planet long before humans ever existed here. And has been threatened at every turn by humans. Causing it to take drastic measures to try and ensure their safety. To only once again be threatened with destruction by humanity and humanity adjacent.
While the core of this book COULD have been about whether taking away one person's free will, to ensure your survival is moral. Instead The Great One is considered "Evil", even when given no real proof that was the case. We do see, these beings rescue them when they crash land, playing with children on the beach.
We even hear from this entitiety the whole reason started was because they were scared for their life, paired with images of them being slaughtered by those who first landed here.
I am not saying this makes taking the free will of people away is alright. Forcing a hierarchy chain of humans working specific goals in order to help ensure that they are powerful enough to keep humans from destroying them by enslaving more humans to continue this process. I can say well that was not a great choice and is kinda terrible. But this was life or death for The Great One.
But we also see that there are humans that aren't under The Great One's control, who tried to bring their loved ones to the path of having free will. Those people chose the happiness they found in the life they had been living. We also see that The Great One could have had these other humans under their control to if it had really wanted, but they didn't until threatened with absolute destruction.
Even once The Great One backs off, now locked in a standoff with humanity's creation. Those who crash landed don't accept that these people might miss this happiness, miss the lives they were living that was fulfilling for them. They had that decision made for them by another outside force, in reality subverting their supposedly gained free will.
The last pages left me feeling like I was seeing something akin to the Spanish Inquisition and the Native American Boarding Schools. Where outsiders seemed to think they knew better. Which is in reality beginning to end the narrative that this book tells.
Below this is Spoilers:
Let's start with the attitudes to the people.
These people crash land on a planet, and judge these people as savages, at no point showing respect for these people or the lives they live. Instead they say things like they will teach them to live with dignity, and judge their practices. Even when they find people who aren't 'worshipping' The Great One. It still didn't feel like they treated these people as equals.
Then there is The Great One a sapient being who lived on this planet long before humans ever existed here. And has been threatened at every turn by humans. Causing it to take drastic measures to try and ensure their safety. To only once again be threatened with destruction by humanity and humanity adjacent.
While the core of this book COULD have been about whether taking away one person's free will, to ensure your survival is moral. Instead The Great One is considered "Evil", even when given no real proof that was the case. We do see, these beings rescue them when they crash land, playing with children on the beach.
We even hear from this entitiety the whole reason started was because they were scared for their life, paired with images of them being slaughtered by those who first landed here.
I am not saying this makes taking the free will of people away is alright. Forcing a hierarchy chain of humans working specific goals in order to help ensure that they are powerful enough to keep humans from destroying them by enslaving more humans to continue this process. I can say well that was not a great choice and is kinda terrible. But this was life or death for The Great One.
But we also see that there are humans that aren't under The Great One's control, who tried to bring their loved ones to the path of having free will. Those people chose the happiness they found in the life they had been living. We also see that The Great One could have had these other humans under their control to if it had really wanted, but they didn't until threatened with absolute destruction.
Even once The Great One backs off, now locked in a standoff with humanity's creation. Those who crash landed don't accept that these people might miss this happiness, miss the lives they were living that was fulfilling for them. They had that decision made for them by another outside force, in reality subverting their supposedly gained free will.
The last pages left me feeling like I was seeing something akin to the Spanish Inquisition and the Native American Boarding Schools. Where outsiders seemed to think they knew better. Which is in reality beginning to end the narrative that this book tells.