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janeneal 's review for:
American War
by Omar El Akkad
This fell very flat for me, both on a writing and emotional level.
It's set roughly fifty to seventy years in the future, which didn't seem to have a huge impact on a story or character level. It just felt like a pointless, tacked on for a fairly important detail. There was brief mention of some newer/different technology, but it wasn't explained very well or comprehensibly to understand what their purpose was or how some of it worked.
Maybe if I had read this sooner, it would have rubbed me so wrong, but the plot of it being a second civil war just felt so myopic. Or I should say the cause of the war felt ridiculous and unrealistic. It was about the South wanting to continue to use fossil fuels. I think even when this was published, it's ridiculous to not think that race or religion or any of those issues would be a factor. Reading it now, it felt especially unrealistic. The protagonists are biracial and not white, so it's just so hard to believe that they wouldn't be experiencing any kind of oppression or racism, especially when they need to flee their home for refugee camps.
It was also hard to understand the stakes, partially because of the war and it's cause, also because of being set in the future, and just the writing itself made it feel like, okay, they're here at this camp now and they talk as if it's bad but it sounds like being there isn't really that bad? There wasn't a lot of detail or texture emotionally to make me understand how dire or not dire the plot developments were for the characters. This flatness and apathy extended to Sarat's relationship with her family members. It was just hard to get a sense of the depth of the relationships and how meaningful anything was, whether it was dialogue or a major plot development.
This just didn't land for me. I read through some other reviews to see if anyone else had similar issues or picked up on anything similar, but I saw complaints about it being too anti-American, so I had to stop (haha). I could have used a much stronger dose of anti-American and felt that the cause of the war made it too toothless in it's critique. Not to humble brag, but reading this was harder than reading Les Mis just because of sheer boredom with everything about it.
It's set roughly fifty to seventy years in the future, which didn't seem to have a huge impact on a story or character level. It just felt like a pointless, tacked on for a fairly important detail. There was brief mention of some newer/different technology, but it wasn't explained very well or comprehensibly to understand what their purpose was or how some of it worked.
Maybe if I had read this sooner, it would have rubbed me so wrong, but the plot of it being a second civil war just felt so myopic. Or I should say the cause of the war felt ridiculous and unrealistic. It was about the South wanting to continue to use fossil fuels. I think even when this was published, it's ridiculous to not think that race or religion or any of those issues would be a factor. Reading it now, it felt especially unrealistic. The protagonists are biracial and not white, so it's just so hard to believe that they wouldn't be experiencing any kind of oppression or racism, especially when they need to flee their home for refugee camps.
It was also hard to understand the stakes, partially because of the war and it's cause, also because of being set in the future, and just the writing itself made it feel like, okay, they're here at this camp now and they talk as if it's bad but it sounds like being there isn't really that bad? There wasn't a lot of detail or texture emotionally to make me understand how dire or not dire the plot developments were for the characters. This flatness and apathy extended to Sarat's relationship with her family members. It was just hard to get a sense of the depth of the relationships and how meaningful anything was, whether it was dialogue or a major plot development.
This just didn't land for me. I read through some other reviews to see if anyone else had similar issues or picked up on anything similar, but I saw complaints about it being too anti-American, so I had to stop (haha). I could have used a much stronger dose of anti-American and felt that the cause of the war made it too toothless in it's critique. Not to humble brag, but reading this was harder than reading Les Mis just because of sheer boredom with everything about it.