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babybearreads 's review for:
The Immortal King Rao
by Vauhini Vara
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
This new release is an interesting combination of tech speculative fiction and immigrant origin story set in 1950's rural India. Vara has been a journalist focusing on business and technology and it shows. Her command of the details of this speculative future world in which your Social profile determines everything and society is run by a mega corporation rather than a government, feels real.
We inhabit Athena's mind, whose father King Rao was the architect of this new world order, who has also injected his whole memory bank into her brain. She leaves home to live with the nearby off-grid rebel community whose leader knocked King Rao down from power 20 years ago. So it's complicated! Athena might be the key to a new better future, but who really knows...
I enjoyed the book overall, even if I wasn't fully immersed in the flow of Vara's writing -- some plot points were pretty general but then so much of the Seattle-area environment was almost too specific. An interesting author to watch, though!
We inhabit Athena's mind, whose father King Rao was the architect of this new world order, who has also injected his whole memory bank into her brain. She leaves home to live with the nearby off-grid rebel community whose leader knocked King Rao down from power 20 years ago. So it's complicated! Athena might be the key to a new better future, but who really knows...
I enjoyed the book overall, even if I wasn't fully immersed in the flow of Vara's writing -- some plot points were pretty general but then so much of the Seattle-area environment was almost too specific. An interesting author to watch, though!