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flexmentallo 's review for:
The Genesis of Misery
by Neon Yang
adventurous
mysterious
sad
As a feat of writing, The Genesis of Misery is fantastic. The use of language, the evocative and largely naturalistic technobabble is really impressive. This is a world that feels fully formed, even while the actual on-the-ground details of the world of the Faithful are actually quite sparse, and a lot of that comes down to Neon's writing.
The pacing and the story are a tad less satisfying. Emily Tesh went over similar territory in her phenomenal Some Desperate Glory -- sexuality, gender, and authoritarianism -- but because that was a single book rather than the start of a series, her ideas had to be contained. Here, the religious fervor of the story that dominates the back half feels... incomplete. Yang lets us know that we're not seeing the whole picture, but as a standalone work -- and we're three years on without an announcement of book 2 -- this doesn't wrap up in the most satisfying place.
The pacing and the story are a tad less satisfying. Emily Tesh went over similar territory in her phenomenal Some Desperate Glory -- sexuality, gender, and authoritarianism -- but because that was a single book rather than the start of a series, her ideas had to be contained. Here, the religious fervor of the story that dominates the back half feels... incomplete. Yang lets us know that we're not seeing the whole picture, but as a standalone work -- and we're three years on without an announcement of book 2 -- this doesn't wrap up in the most satisfying place.