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A review by spacestationtrustfund
The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm by Nancy Farmer
3.0
This book was a BLAST to read. It has its flaws to be sure, the most noteworthy of which is that the characters are really secondary actors to the primary focus, which is the setting—but oh man, what a setting. The plot reminded me a lot of one of those folkloric tales full of stock elements and repetitive circumstances—the kids are kidnapped, escape; kidnapped, escape; kidnapped, escape; ad infinitum—but I had so much fun tearing through it in around an hour; it's a pretty fast read, at only around 300 pages. (I don't know if that's short to anyone else, but it's pretty short for me, comparatively speaking.) I could easily see this being a really fun movie, either for kids (the relatively low-stakes plot and easy-to-understand premise would work pretty well) or for adults (the themes are very fucking dark at times).
The story is set in a futuristic Zimbabwean locale, which intrigued me because it's rare, in my experience, that a white American author would set a science fiction story in... well, Southern Africa. Of course, I'm hardly qualified to judge how well a book from 1994 conveyed the reality of Zimbabwe, but for what it's worth, Nancy Farmer seems to have done her research: she spent quite a while in Zimbabwe working as an entomologist, and the portrayal of Zimbabwe in the book isn't just a randomly picked setting—it makes sense, ties in to the plot, and influences the story and the characters. Set in 2194, a near-futuristic time, the story follows the three children of General Matsika after they sneak out of their smart house (yes, I too was reminded of Bradbury's There Will Come Soft Rains) and immediately get into trouble. The children travel through all sorts of places, encountering a wide variety of people and elements of Zimbabwean culture both traditional and modern, before returning home. Equally prevalent in the novel are the futuristic elements characteristic of sci-fi, advanced technology and AI and the like, and very real dangers threatening countries like Zimbabwe, resource depletion, global warming, and the aftereffects of colonialism on societies.
The plot, as it goes, isn't all that complex: the children aren't really too interesting or sympathetic, considering how many times they seem to have to be taught that they've lived incredibly sheltered lives thanks to their father's wealth, and the titular Ear, Eye, and Arm—previously unemployed amateur detectives with unusual abilities as a result of nuclear and chemical pollution—are comedically terrible at the job they were hired to do. But the worldbuilding makes up for it, meticulously crafted and lovingly populated with a real abundance of fascinating forays into different customs and lifestyles.
The story is set in a futuristic Zimbabwean locale, which intrigued me because it's rare, in my experience, that a white American author would set a science fiction story in... well, Southern Africa. Of course, I'm hardly qualified to judge how well a book from 1994 conveyed the reality of Zimbabwe, but for what it's worth, Nancy Farmer seems to have done her research: she spent quite a while in Zimbabwe working as an entomologist, and the portrayal of Zimbabwe in the book isn't just a randomly picked setting—it makes sense, ties in to the plot, and influences the story and the characters. Set in 2194, a near-futuristic time, the story follows the three children of General Matsika after they sneak out of their smart house (yes, I too was reminded of Bradbury's There Will Come Soft Rains) and immediately get into trouble. The children travel through all sorts of places, encountering a wide variety of people and elements of Zimbabwean culture both traditional and modern, before returning home. Equally prevalent in the novel are the futuristic elements characteristic of sci-fi, advanced technology and AI and the like, and very real dangers threatening countries like Zimbabwe, resource depletion, global warming, and the aftereffects of colonialism on societies.
The plot, as it goes, isn't all that complex: the children aren't really too interesting or sympathetic, considering how many times they seem to have to be taught that they've lived incredibly sheltered lives thanks to their father's wealth, and the titular Ear, Eye, and Arm—previously unemployed amateur detectives with unusual abilities as a result of nuclear and chemical pollution—are comedically terrible at the job they were hired to do. But the worldbuilding makes up for it, meticulously crafted and lovingly populated with a real abundance of fascinating forays into different customs and lifestyles.