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karmakat 's review for:
American War
by Omar El Akkad
3 to 3.5 stars
Popsuger 2018: book by an author of a different ethnicity than you
ARC copy received at ALA conference.
Honestly, I'm surprised by how much I enjoyed this. I've been trying to define this book's genre, and it's really hard to do. Dystopian, yes, but not entirely. Speculative fiction? Maybe. Literary fiction, possibly. In any case, I was quickly and easily engaged by the story of a United States irrevocably altered by climate change, ultimately causing a second civil war. The first third of the book (roughly), was incredibly well-written and sucked me in. The middle section was fine, but the pace slowed quite a bit and left me wanting something more. My only issue was the last part of the book. It took an incredibly dark turn that I found off-putting. And then it felt like the author went out of his way to make amends for that and then tried to tie it up in a pretty little bow. I do have some issues with the author choosing to make this another north vs. south thing - he had the choice to split the country any way he wanted. In any case, I definitely recommend this for anyone wanting something dystopian-like that is far different from the typical book of that genre.
Popsuger 2018: book by an author of a different ethnicity than you
ARC copy received at ALA conference.
Honestly, I'm surprised by how much I enjoyed this. I've been trying to define this book's genre, and it's really hard to do. Dystopian, yes, but not entirely. Speculative fiction? Maybe. Literary fiction, possibly. In any case, I was quickly and easily engaged by the story of a United States irrevocably altered by climate change, ultimately causing a second civil war. The first third of the book (roughly), was incredibly well-written and sucked me in. The middle section was fine, but the pace slowed quite a bit and left me wanting something more. My only issue was the last part of the book. It took an incredibly dark turn that I found off-putting. And then it felt like the author went out of his way to make amends for that and then tried to tie it up in a pretty little bow. I do have some issues with the author choosing to make this another north vs. south thing - he had the choice to split the country any way he wanted. In any case, I definitely recommend this for anyone wanting something dystopian-like that is far different from the typical book of that genre.