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A review by atagarev
Midnight Robber by Nalo Hopkinson
3.0
A very light and easy read but mostly failed to deliver on its promise. The novel masquerades as a far future science fiction utopia and initially sets up plenty of interesting conflicts but ultimately it becomes clear that the world is shallow and borderline incoherent while the character building is based on realities from our 20th century rather than this supposed futuristic utopia we are shown.
It is difficult to say what the narrative fails to deliver a pay off on because the book keeps seeming like it will tackle some specific subject (AI and privacy, colonization and slavery, culture clash, incest and pedophilia, alien contact, parallel universes, myth building through ever evolving spoken narratives, language and thought modification) only to give up and move on to totally different topic. All of the ones I listed are at least marked as of interest several times but most don't go past that. Even the ones that get more attention end up getting a shallow and cliched treatment.
The most distinctive feature of the book is its *voice*. I can imagine it will be absolute blast to listen to the audio version as Hopkinson focuses so much on the spoken tradition and it all feels like a fireside tale. There is something to be said about listening to people having high tech discussions with an AI in Jamaican patois as something perfectly standard and I kept hoping the repeatedly brought up nanny song will turn into something deeper or more meaningful.
It is difficult to say what the narrative fails to deliver a pay off on because the book keeps seeming like it will tackle some specific subject (AI and privacy, colonization and slavery, culture clash, incest and pedophilia, alien contact, parallel universes, myth building through ever evolving spoken narratives, language and thought modification) only to give up and move on to totally different topic. All of the ones I listed are at least marked as of interest several times but most don't go past that. Even the ones that get more attention end up getting a shallow and cliched treatment.
The most distinctive feature of the book is its *voice*. I can imagine it will be absolute blast to listen to the audio version as Hopkinson focuses so much on the spoken tradition and it all feels like a fireside tale. There is something to be said about listening to people having high tech discussions with an AI in Jamaican patois as something perfectly standard and I kept hoping the repeatedly brought up nanny song will turn into something deeper or more meaningful.