Take a photo of a barcode or cover
books_and_tea_with_v 's review for:
The Mother Code
by Carole Stivers
It's a little unfair to read and review this book after the pandemic we just had, especially considering this book is about a flu-like virus that almost eradicates the entire human population, but even despite that, I still thoroughly enjoyed it.
I really liked the premise of robot mothers raising kids, and being all motherly and protective over them with their incredibly lethal lasers. And going into the book, I made the assumption that mosst of the book would take place after the eradication of humanity... this was not the case. Instead what we have are two stories being told simultaneously, one in the past as the virus begins to spread, and one in the present, as the children survive in the wastelands with their mother robots.
There's mixed feelings about this. On the hand, I really didn't need to read about how they tried to fight the virus that we know they won't win against. At the same time, learning about these characters gave more emotional meaning to some events later in the book. Maybe it could have been handled better? We know they won't beat the virus, and it was interesting to learn how the Mother Code projject came to be... but we didn't need half the book to learn this. More time could've been spent showing us how the children grew up, with all of the pastevents shown to us as the characters learn it themselves. As it was, the majority of the story with the children consisted of hiding in a cave from sandstorms, and then being confused at a warehouse.
There is a lot of potential here, and even though I enjoyed it and gave it 4 stars, it is really closer to 3.5 stars. The story is lovely, but I would have done it differently.
I really liked the premise of robot mothers raising kids, and being all motherly and protective over them with their incredibly lethal lasers. And going into the book, I made the assumption that mosst of the book would take place after the eradication of humanity... this was not the case. Instead what we have are two stories being told simultaneously, one in the past as the virus begins to spread, and one in the present, as the children survive in the wastelands with their mother robots.
There's mixed feelings about this. On the hand, I really didn't need to read about how they tried to fight the virus that we know they won't win against. At the same time, learning about these characters gave more emotional meaning to some events later in the book. Maybe it could have been handled better? We know they won't beat the virus, and it was interesting to learn how the Mother Code projject came to be... but we didn't need half the book to learn this. More time could've been spent showing us how the children grew up, with all of the pastevents shown to us as the characters learn it themselves. As it was, the majority of the story with the children consisted of hiding in a cave from sandstorms, and then being confused at a warehouse.
There is a lot of potential here, and even though I enjoyed it and gave it 4 stars, it is really closer to 3.5 stars. The story is lovely, but I would have done it differently.