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A review by withanhauser
Amatka by Karin Tidbeck
4.0
Short, kind of weird book that I enjoyed. The premise reads as familiar (mysterious, dystopic world, with a mysterious history and autocratic governance), but the author creates a unique world within it. I particularly liked the central theme--words, as either a means of imprisonment, fixing things in a set order (e.g., for marking objects so that they don't disappear); or as something free-flowing and formless, not trapped as a universal descriptor (but, ominous and ethereal as a result of such lack of definition). It was an interesting perspective (I've never really thought of definitions and language as inherently narrow and directive) that I've since thought about beyond the context of the book itself (existence as ultimately self-determined and slightly formless).
The setting of the novel reminded me a lot of "The Left-Hand of Darkness"; Amatka, the title colony, is cold and dark, and the society there seems simultaneously set in the future (or, at least, a world that seems advanced beyond our own), but somehow limited to devices and objects of the past. And, the tone (and some parts of the plot) reminded me a lot of "Annihilation"; there's a darkly mysterious, quietly spooky tone throughout, an ever-present sense that something discomfiting and weird is going to happen (there are also sinister, underground tunnels with glowing lichen). Somehow "Amatka" didn't feel as ambitious as either book, but it's no less enjoyable; and, at only 216 pages, I found it to be a quick, but surprisingly searching, read.
The setting of the novel reminded me a lot of "The Left-Hand of Darkness"; Amatka, the title colony, is cold and dark, and the society there seems simultaneously set in the future (or, at least, a world that seems advanced beyond our own), but somehow limited to devices and objects of the past. And, the tone (and some parts of the plot) reminded me a lot of "Annihilation"; there's a darkly mysterious, quietly spooky tone throughout, an ever-present sense that something discomfiting and weird is going to happen (there are also sinister, underground tunnels with glowing lichen). Somehow "Amatka" didn't feel as ambitious as either book, but it's no less enjoyable; and, at only 216 pages, I found it to be a quick, but surprisingly searching, read.