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april_does_feral_sometimes 's review for:
Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach
by Kelly Robson
The book ‘Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach’ by Kelly Robson is very good, except that it felt incomplete to me, like it was missing the last chapter. Of course, in real life, all of us currently alive are right now missing the final chapter of our actual future, aren’t we? We aren’t capable of traveling into the future like Doctor Who and his Tardis. In this sense, our personal stories are incomplete, although most of us are able to extrapolate what is likely to happen. Ok, ok, I am getting carried away. ‘Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach’ did that to me. I think the novel is an extreme mind game of literary playfulness. Of course, maybe I am reading too much into it.
Until the last page, I was completely immersed in this science fiction story. It manages in only a few hundred pages to present a future which is both hopeful and dystopian. The Earth is a ruined and poisoned mess caused by Mankind, but some people have climbed out of the underground cities they built to survive and are scientifically attempting to fix the ecological damage on the surface of the planet. Technology is very very advanced. People can opt for body modifications for improved mobility and functionality. However, not everyone agrees with moving forward in fixing the present state (actually, our future state, in two meanings of the word, literally and figuratively, fictionally, haha) of Earth that way because time travel has been invented. Banks, with the power of financing scientific projects if they so choose to do so, hold all of the cards of what the future will look like, and also the past…my head is starting to hurt, gentler reader…
I have copied the book blurb:
”Discover a shifting history of adventure as humanity clashes over whether to repair their ruined planet or luxuriate in a less tainted past.
In 2267, Earth has just begun to recover from worldwide ecological disasters. Minh is part of the generation that first moved back up to the surface of the Earth from the underground hells, to reclaim humanity's ancestral habitat. She's spent her entire life restoring river ecosystems, but lately the kind of long-term restoration projects Minh works on have been stalled due to the invention of time travel. When she gets the opportunity take a team to 2000 BC to survey the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, she jumps at the chance to uncover the secrets of the shadowy think tank that controls time travel technology.”
The writing is concise with no unnecessary verbiage, with two parallel narratives happening in our present timeline at the same time, at least in my uncollapsed timeline of reading the novel now, but actually being a future and past story being told concurrently. Readers will need to pay close attention as every word matters to understanding what is going on. The author does give readers everything they need to know until the ending, where she leaves readers suspended in Time, lost, not knowing what happens in the future or in the new past. I felt like I was in a weird language arts class studying a huge past perfect simple tense joke used to drive the plot forward (and back) in a science fiction story after finishing (?). Discuss.
Until the last page, I was completely immersed in this science fiction story. It manages in only a few hundred pages to present a future which is both hopeful and dystopian. The Earth is a ruined and poisoned mess caused by Mankind, but some people have climbed out of the underground cities they built to survive and are scientifically attempting to fix the ecological damage on the surface of the planet. Technology is very very advanced. People can opt for body modifications for improved mobility and functionality. However, not everyone agrees with moving forward in fixing the present state (actually, our future state, in two meanings of the word, literally and figuratively, fictionally, haha) of Earth that way because time travel has been invented. Banks, with the power of financing scientific projects if they so choose to do so, hold all of the cards of what the future will look like, and also the past…my head is starting to hurt, gentler reader…
I have copied the book blurb:
”Discover a shifting history of adventure as humanity clashes over whether to repair their ruined planet or luxuriate in a less tainted past.
In 2267, Earth has just begun to recover from worldwide ecological disasters. Minh is part of the generation that first moved back up to the surface of the Earth from the underground hells, to reclaim humanity's ancestral habitat. She's spent her entire life restoring river ecosystems, but lately the kind of long-term restoration projects Minh works on have been stalled due to the invention of time travel. When she gets the opportunity take a team to 2000 BC to survey the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, she jumps at the chance to uncover the secrets of the shadowy think tank that controls time travel technology.”
The writing is concise with no unnecessary verbiage, with two parallel narratives happening in our present timeline at the same time, at least in my uncollapsed timeline of reading the novel now, but actually being a future and past story being told concurrently. Readers will need to pay close attention as every word matters to understanding what is going on. The author does give readers everything they need to know until the ending, where she leaves readers suspended in Time, lost, not knowing what happens in the future or in the new past. I felt like I was in a weird language arts class studying a huge past perfect simple tense joke used to drive the plot forward (and back) in a science fiction story after finishing (?). Discuss.