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A review by raesengele
Autonomous by Annalee Newitz
Did not finish book. Stopped at 33%.
Right off the top: this is not the LGBT friendly cyberpunk book that it's advertised as. Yes, it's full of queer characters, but in the way of the 50s and not a queer woman in the modern era. Seriously, if the author's queerness hadn't been included in her bio I would have thought this was written by someone outside of the community.
This is my second attempt to get through this book and though I got further this time, I've been absolutely dragging my feet doing so. The base concept of Autonomous is intriguing, but every primary character (except for Jack) and the romances are so uncomfortable they were getting in the way. I read other reviews to get a feel for if I should just push through and decided from there it's just not worth it. I'm already tired of man is clearly into other man but even after having sex with him refuses to admit his feelings because "I'm not gay" (or the f-slur which Newitz uses a shocking amount for a queer woman) types of stories and I was willing to push through if the book ended with him getting past that, but since he seemingly doesn't AND gets away with it by coercing his genderless android partner to change pronouns for him I'm just not here for that. I'm also just not here for Jack's weird relationship with Threezed. The power imbalance is just too much even if Jack is (poorly) fighting against it.I skimmed the scene with Jack's ill-fated partner which was just disappointing as well. It felt so akin to Cosima and Delphine in Orphan Black but with a heavy dose of bury your gays and I'm just tired of that, as well. I guess I'm just already too tired with the state of the world to give my time to a book focusing on characters and topics that are even more bleak.
This is my second attempt to get through this book and though I got further this time, I've been absolutely dragging my feet doing so. The base concept of Autonomous is intriguing, but every primary character (except for Jack) and the romances are so uncomfortable they were getting in the way. I read other reviews to get a feel for if I should just push through and decided from there it's just not worth it. I'm already tired of man is clearly into other man but even after having sex with him refuses to admit his feelings because "I'm not gay" (or the f-slur which Newitz uses a shocking amount for a queer woman) types of stories and I was willing to push through if the book ended with him getting past that, but since he seemingly doesn't AND gets away with it by coercing his genderless android partner to change pronouns for him I'm just not here for that. I'm also just not here for Jack's weird relationship with Threezed. The power imbalance is just too much even if Jack is (poorly) fighting against it.