Ana works for her father at the
Dictionary. Just before the release of the third edition, his most
significant work, he disappears. Ana is distraught. She has just
broken up with her lover Max, and now her father is missing. Alone and
frightened, she turns to Bart, a friend and co-worker. Bart is
entranced by Ana. He can barely believe his good fortune. His friend
Max is out of the picture, and Ana has turned to him.
The story is set in a future where
people have become so dependent of their Memes, a device that sounds
like a smart phone, that they use it to look up the words they can't
remember. As the story progresses people increasingly forget words
and start talking nonsense. Word Flu is gaining epidemic proportions.
Communication is failing and civilization is rapidly disintegrating.
The plot is clever focusing on people's
increasing dependence on personal machines to think for them.
However, the story moves slowly. The book is written as personal
journals kept by the principals, but as with many personal journals,
the writers ramble. It becomes boring. The first chapters are
particularly bad, and it isn't helped by Bart's tendency to throw in
references to Hegel. About halfway through, the pace picks up, but by
then you may have stopped reading.
I found the main characters unlikable.
Ana is incredibly self-absorbed. I wanted to shake her and say get
over it. Bart is more fun, but his tendency to be pretentious in his
journal entries was off-putting.
The novel is set in a era of very
advanced technology, at least as far as personal devices are
concerned, but the rest of the setting is rather common place. I
would have expected more advanced technology in other aspects of the
world.
I can't recommend the book unless you
particularly enjoy urban speculative fiction. As I noted in the
beginning,
I liked the idea, but felt the implementation didn't do it
justice.
I reviewed this book for Net Galley.
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