What we enjoyed about the book:

• Many different focalisers
• AI inside a character’s head taking over –> uncanny persona, own agenda –> AI life of its own
• Uncanny elements, dystopia but still felt realistic
• Creepy but well done technological advancements –> connected to our reality
• “I thought I didn’t like it, but I did like it”
• main character is the world!
• all the chapters are connected, new chapters surprised us
• “Welcome to the Machine” –> tour guide –> more of that would’ve been cool
• “Ten Percent Thief” new title, different expectations, old title more fitting
• You get invested in the world
• Nina’s adoptive parents failed to introduce her to her background; no chance for her to know her heritage –> parallels to adopting children with a different cultural or ethnical background and failing to take care
• Funny bits: woman has to go shopping herself
• System is forcing you into technology
• Surviving in a technocracy
• Emoji parts: ridiculous?!
• “Black Mirror” vibe (Marthe recommends you watch “San Junipero” to start with, her favourite)
• Celebrity who got pregant chapter was so interesting! Post-feminist?! Realistic!? Society telling women how to be pregnant, even then. –> Person also barely talks, everybody just talks about her
• All about productivity and how we lose humanity
• Online discourse, being entitled to an opinion –> pregnant women
• Pregnancy pods: make pregnancy shorter to increase productivity
• Resistance was cool, systemic, smart, organised
• Using the footage to then influence the virtuals –> weaponise the footage –> use the media
• Forest: art and community
• Connection between revolutionary ideas and art –> music, forest, people coming together –> power of art
• Nina’s hybrid identity sad, will never belong to any group properly
• Tragedy, sad
• Can the productivity focus be unlearned on a society-level?
• Hope for the future? Will the analogues be good leaders? Ex-virtuals as good leaders?
• Play with language in the AI chapter was amazing: “you”, “we”, “I” –> blurring boundaries; trying to learn what love is; use it against the person
• Train guide: language; psychological observation of the tour guides; slipping in language; what are you allowed to say and what aren’t you allowed to say
• Language does make reality –> brilliant theme of the book in its entirety
• HoloSphere a different reality
• Short story vibe, extremely well connected; unexpected structure; deeply care about people; imagination can fill in the gaps?
• Perfect length
• Indian caste system: lowest caste –> Analogues
• Vegetable farm: only way for the analogues to be productive –> spare parts –> “Cloud Atlas”; “Never Let Me Go”; “Promised Neverland” (trope)
• Capitalism gone wild

What we discussed:

• Explore Virtuals more who want to improve the situation of the Analogues
• Switch teachers to robots; how does the society work? Is this really functional? Everybody is going to be a robot in the end?
• Everything controlled by the AI?
• How do other cities work???? What about cities that are not Bell Corp.?
• What’s outside the city? Can one flee to another city? Refugees?
• Some chapters too short? Bridges between different stories as vignettes? Ray Bradbury vibes
• Climate change & construction of this world could be explored me
• Cover a bit misleading, looks too fantasy-ish

Weird Ratings:

• 4/5 Preggobots
• 4/5 Hyperreality videos
• 5/5 Socially awkward people hiding in cakes

Book recommendation by R. (thank you): If you liked “The Ten Percent Thief” –> “The Free People’s Village” by Sim Kern

What we enjoyed about the book:

• Interesting how everything was connected
• Characters from the caravan were cool
• Felt realistic even though it was written before our pandemic, kudos to the author
• Difficult to read post-pandemic
• Didn’t focus too much on the disease and suffering, rather on coping
• What is important in such a situation?
• Relatable: stocking up on food and toilet paper. Hard to read
• New generation portrayal interesting: stay connected to the world before
• Well written
• Theatre and Shakespeare parts brilliant
• Survival is not enough, you need more: theatre, the arts, something else to live for
• Memory as a key theme: how do we remember? What do we forget? What is being lost?
• Readers get a more complete backstory than any of the characters
• Hopeful ending, joy despite the bleakness
• Art as the most important thing in a postapocalyptic world, changes the genre
• Museum: remnants of a civilization lost, artefacts
• Global scale of the novel well done
• Makes us question everything we take for granted today
• How would I explain electricity or the internet or airplanes to somebody who has never encountered it? What a wild thought!
• Chance encounters not by chance — interconnectedness satisfying!
• Vibe of the book was cool
• Airport storyline fascinating: waiting for a saviour, work together, save themselves
• “I really really liked it generally”
• Beautiful writing
• Humans working together, humanity, wonderful despite the horrible situation
• Not leaning too much into the violence and aggression
• Retaining one’s humanity, trying to stay to connected to the person one was before the pandemic
• What keeps people going? Art! Music! Science! Special interests. What sustains us?
• Eerie and strange reading it after a pandemic. Made one reflect a lot!
• More than mere survival is important: what gives us joy? Keep the joy alive!
• No zombies was refreshing! The only evil = humans
• Novel purposefully tries to avoid the ‘catastrophy porn’, more nuanced, more about people, lighter
• Graphic novel series was lovely, how everything resolves around it was satisfying
• Miranda survived because of the comic, how important and escapist can a comic be? And later on it helped them facing trauma. Relating to art from both sides: pre and post pandemic
• Shakespeare’s timelessness: arts connects people, we need it, desperately
• Arthur also connected all narrative strands, holding it all together, yet he’s the one who dies right away

What we discussed:

• Novel a bit underwhelming, “I liked it but I didn’t like it as a whole”, too many storyline? Focus more on airport storyline or “going all over the place”
• Bit disorienting, going back and forth in time, confusing. When is this? Past, present, future?!
• Pretty predictable, e.g. identity of the prophet
• Prophet easy to spot and a bit meh
• Open questions: how do people react to sick people afterwards? What happened to the sickness? What happened to the second wife of Arthur?
• Felt a bit too constructed and artifical? Yet also somehow nice
• Pandemic story just lost after a while, nobody worries about it any more? Why?
• Tired of stories where postapocalyptic religious people are all extreme; cults full of fanatics, stereotypical; why not normal religion? Religion can offer comfort? And people then use it to gain power?
• Ending of prophet very anticlimatic, “there should have been a bit more action there”
• Rushed ending too @ prophet
• Satisfying because everthing came together in the end but also artifical, felt a fake
• Kirsten connection bit far-fetched
• Arthur unlikeable character who is the center of the story somehow? Meh, too much clichee
• Jeevan partly unlikeable
• Pre-pandemic parts a bit boring: relationship drama; instead: more world building?
• Cut down the prophet storyline, motivation of the prophet dubious? Just because of a runaway ‘wife’?
• Beginning a bit hard to get into? Felt random? Unconnected? Slow going? DNF potential, give me more pandemic…
• Narrator bit on the nose… Wasn’t ominous? Don’t tell us everything? Leave us some mystery and leave us wonder? We can imagine things ourselves?
• Apocalypse, hell quotes, bit on the nose at the very beginning
• Hard time caring about some characters? Make us care a bit more? Let us get to know them?
• Origin of the flu from Russia? Stereotypical from a US author?
• Why do they move into a Wendy’s or fast food chain building in a pandemic? All houses are available? Why do that? “I didn’t get it. Why do you wanna live there?”
• Why were people named after their instruments??? Dehumanising? Whole group? Errrrr?

(Weird) Ratings!

• 4.5/5 obvious Shakespeare references; refreshing genre addition; maybe hyped because
• might change because not finished yet: 3.5/5 King Lears “not fully sure what I think of it yet”
• 4.5/5 false prophets
• 3/5 TV guides
• 4.5/5 airplanes
• 4.5/5 instruments
• 4.5/5 comic book series

Interesting: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest/the-rewriting-of-emily-st-john-mandel

Also check out “Sea of Tranquility”

What we enjoyed about the book:

• Dropping the title in the book quite late, fascinating
• Vibe was great: sultan, souks, bazar
• 1001 Nights vibe, does not feel stereotypical, weaved into it very well
• Arabic setting, does not feel forced, does not fall into ‘Oriental’ stereotypes, Kuwait-American author does a great job
• Stories within stories cool
• Story about storytelling, meta, how stories change through telling it, oral tradition nice
• Easy to read, young adult patterns
• Arabic language in the book works very well
• Like in Arabic: “Neither…” instead “Once upon a time”
• Not overexplaining culture, language etc. –> does not alienate or other
• Immersive!
• Fast-paced but does not feel rushed
• “Mazen is my baby”, golden retriever vibes
• “Aisha, I love her”
• Characters are great
• Nice plottwists! 40 thiefs are (SPOILER!!!!!) also djinn (partly)
• Quadir ❤ drinks pure sugar, sweet!
• Not a strong focus on romance
• Ahmed is a good person partly doing the wrong things partly but thinks he’s doing the right things; as a love interest interesting –> does not see djinn as people; duality of it interesting in connection to L.
• Relic idea fascinating, L. struggles with that
• Djinn culture vs. human culture: memory = relict –> should go to different people and be kept in use
• First half of the book quite cosy
• Forced quest was to be expected but it was interesting
• Positions of the brothers connected to the mothers; influences their relationships a lot
• Djinn in exile idea interesting
• L. not realizing O. is M. was hilarious
• Mazen has a nice character development
• M. never has a problem with L. or A. taking care of him
• Aisha’s character arc fascinating: deal with a djinn, connection to 1001 story!
• L. complex character, leaning on Q., not the “strong female character” stereotype, traumatised, but also trying to find a balance in her life between being vulnerable and being independent; well done
• A. ends up liking M. against her better judgement – hilarious!
• A. has a toxic crush (????) on O.?
• Using djinn blood sinister “I loved it”; djinn died: vivid nature in the desert

What we discussed:

• Aisha too preoccupied with herself to notice anything off with Omar etc., funny
• Ahmed’s fate not as surprising but meh
• Beginning not fast-paced enough?
• World building underused but djinn world etc. will be focussed on in the sequels so that’s ok
• Mazen gullible, naive and does not question anything
• Third brother not really given enough space and complexity
• Plotwise not incredible original, characters a bit predictable too
• Body switching could’ve been used more to understand Mazen more (or Omar)
• Mazen very passive; dislikes his privilege but does not do anything about it
• Mazen is a bit mindless, immature, had been too pampered; does not think about consequences
• Characters a bit too young? YA trope again?
• “Everybody need a hug and therapy again”
• L. and A. could bond more, more female friendship?
• How do ghouls work???

Ratings:

• 5/5 magical relic
• 4.5/5 sinking cities in the desert
• 4.5/5 undead ghouls
• Some people had not finished the book yet, so more ratings are coming (here or on the Discord!)

Better late than never! BSFG has voted for our next read & I’m looking forward to the meeting this Thursday!

Hi everyone,

The Percy Jackson meeting is going to take place via our Discord server voice chat. This way, more people can participate. Hear you at 5pm today!

Cheers!

What we enjoyed about the book:

• Wendell (controversial conversation starter!)
• turn the book took when Wendell arrived (improved the story)
• fairy world, storytelling
• nice world-building
• Irish folklore etc.
• different fairies for different places –> regionality
• scholarship / fairy academia great
• institutionalisation of folklore, yet general population does not like the scholars
• the ‘folk’ part of the story about the ‘Folk’ despite the academics meddling
• Emily’s scientific mind fascinating, yet utter lack of awareness for danger, more scholarly interest than self preservation…
• dog ❤
• E.A. Poe references great, also a “Black Cat”
• Emily learns the Fairy language, committed
• Emily struggles to see fairies as subjects vs. objects
• dehumanisation/humanisation…what’s human?
• W.B. Yeats
• Katherine Briggs
• logic vs. chaos
• Emily does not change much throughout the book?
• morale of the story: everything works better when we solve problems together (as a community)
• footnotes nice (for some)
• overall enjoyable
• lumberjack love story amazing, easy queer rep
• really entertaining
• Wendell as a fairy great: witty, cheeky, charismatic, annoying

What we discussed about the book:

• we hated the love story (not all of us, but many)
• Wendell as love interest meh
• does not feel like a healthy relationship either
• autism-coding of Emily very problematic and stereotypical
• romance incredibly rushed
• changelings also very weird
• students are caricatures
• academia part so underused: Wendell as professor about himself, could’ve used that much more, hilarious
• Wendell lots of red flags
• “it was revealed to me in a dream” type of academic that Wendell is –> could’ve been used more for comedy
• language barrier solved too easily and quickly
• weird pan-Scandinavian thing going on, felt like lazy research
• bastard child of fairy king unimportant all of a sudden
• vibe actually better than the story
• meta parts great but underused
• disliked the ending: too rushed, too damsel in distress, too many plotholes
• pacing issues, partly boring passages
• glaringly obvious plotholes
• Emily frees herself from the curse (badass!!!) and then goes to the tree anyways???
• dark side of Wendell could’ve been explored more
• too much for one book
• too convenient: coat as deus ex machina?
• what happened to the changeling? kid needs therapy now? parents’s story also enigmatic?

Ratings:

• 4/5 despite the flaws, enjoyable
• 3/5 silver needles
• 3.5/5 changelings
• 3/5 Let’s get married so I get my thesis done
• 3.5/5 everybody needs therapy
• 3.5/5 fairy trinkets, “knocking off points because of the romance”
• 4/5 cute brownies