2.5 Stars
I decided
to read this book because it is one of the five selections for this year’s
Canada Reads. Having finished it, I find
myself shaking my head and wondering why it was chosen.
This crime
story in a science-fiction setting takes place on New Arcadia, a near-future
town-sized oil rig off the shore of Newfoundland. The protagonist is Go Jung-Hwa who is a body
guard for the sex workers. When New Arcadia
is bought by Lynch Ltd., Hwa ends up being hired to protect the family scion, Joel
Lynch, a teenage genius whose life has been threatened by “a conspiracy of
sentient artificial superintelligences” from the “deep future” (43 – 44). Then some of her former clients and
friends are killed in Jack the Ripper style and Hwa starts investigating.
Hwa is
different from most other people in New Arcadia because she has no
bioengineered enhancements while virtually everyone else has an augmented
body. She is supposed to be seen as the
strong female lead, but I didn’t find her that smart or self-sufficient. In fact, she comes across as a cliché of an
action movie hero. She barges in and
intimidates and doesn’t let physical injuries stop her. Yet there is an inconsistency in her
portrayal; she’s either a badass or a damsel in distress who needs to be
rescued. Admittedly, there is some
attempt to humanize her: she has a
difficult relationship with her mother and a neurological disorder has stained
her skin and makes her susceptible to seizures.
As a result, she has little self-esteem; her physical appearance fills
her with shame.
Then there’s
Joel, the 15-year-old, who seems too mature for his age. He even handles a press conference with the
adeptness of a seasoned politician. And
Daniel Síofra, Hwa’s boss, is just too perfect.
He is handsome and strong and sensitive and Hwa’s
knight-in-shining-armour on more than one occasion. A romance between Hwa and Daniel is
inevitable from the moment they meet.
The
narrative feels underdeveloped. Some
events mentioned seem to serve little purpose; the apartment break-in, for
example, seems gratuitous. There is a
lack of transitions so the plot doesn’t hang together. It also seems as if the book tries to be too
many genres: crime thriller, science-fiction,
and romance.
I enjoyed the
touches of Newfoundland local colour.
There are references to bakeapples and a visit to Terra Nova. Occasionally, Hwa speaks in dialect though it’s
largely limited to the use of “b’y.”
The theme
for this year’s Canada Reads is “What is the one book Canadians need now?” I’m not sure how this novel fits this
theme. It portrays a single-industry
town dependent on fossil fuel extraction.
Are we supposed to think of Alberta?
The corporation that owns New Arcadia acts like a government. Is this book a warning about increasing
corporatization where companies are like cults:
“’Is [the Lynch company] not a novel organization fanatically devoted to
making possible the wishes and dreams of a single figure, based on his view of
reality’” (225)? Is the book a warning
about where technology might take humans in the future? Is it an indictment of society’s obsession
with physical perfection? [I couldn’t help
but think of Donald Trump in this description:
“he was far too tanned . . . His skin . . . was a hell of a lot more orange . . . Nothing screamed ‘I’m terrified of aging!’ louder than a mela-nano
infusion” (38).] The novel addresses all these issues, but,
again, it seems to try to be too many things and so lacks focus.
I do not
often read speculative fiction, so perhaps this book was not meant for me. I found it disjointed and just plain weird.
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