Future Home of the Living God
Ratings19
Average rating3.5
15
Ratings19
Average rating3.5
The world as we know it is ending. As Cedar Hawk Songmaker goes back to her own biological beginnings, society around her begins to disintegrate, fueled by a swelling panic about the end of humanity.
Reviews with the most likes.
Well that was a waste of time. This book spends its entire length asking one real question. Will the main character's baby survive? There are a number of smaller questions - Will the baby be born normal? Why is evolution turning backwards, or sideways? What happened to the main character's father? What happened to her friend from the hospital? What happened to her husband? Does she ever find freedom?
THE BOOK ANSWERS NONE OF THESE QUESTIONS.
I am really frustrated with this book. Why did I bother reading it if it refuses to resolve any of its plotlines?
We're going to get a little bit into writing theory here. It has been a classic recommendation to have the climax of your book 2/3 of the way through the book, and have the last third be denouement. Wrap-up. Show us how the climax affected the characters and the world. John Green does this well - all his books follow a standard plot line. Character A is introduced. A meets B. B changes A's life. B leaves A's life. (Those last two are usually incorporated in the climax of the book.) A has to learn how to live without B in a world changed by B's existence in it. It's a little formulaic, but it works for Green, and his books are great. Some books do not do this so well. Wheel of Time had 5-6 pages of denouement after the series climax, and nothing was really revealed about how the events changed the world for the better. Future Home of the Living God had TWO. TWO PAGES AFTER THE CLIMAX. AND THEY ANSWER NOTHING. The main character talks about missing winter.
I finished the book and almost threw it across the room. I probably would have, except for two things: I was at a friend's house, and it was a library book. That's all that saved it from that fate. I have stacks of books I want to read, and I feel like I just wasted a few hours on this piece of crap.
The writing was actually pretty good, and the main character is an Ojibwe Indian, so there's minority representation, but the book as a whole was just CRAP. Wrap up your plotlines. Answer the questions you ask. (At least the ones having to do with your plot - you can leave unanswered philosophical questions, that's fine.)
Hard pass on this book.
You can find all my reviews at Goddess in the Stacks.
2 stars for “it was just okay.” This book left me with more questions than answers. I think I prefer Erdrich's literary fiction, and this felt opportunistic in trying to capitalize on the boom for speculative fiction around women's rights and women's bodies.
To close to Handmaid's Tale? Maybe, but I think the idea at the centre of Handmaid's Tale can handle more than one author's approach. And, most importantly (to me) it kept me completely engaged through 2, almost back-to-back, plane rides.
The evo-bio stuff was interesting, although I was unclear how her heritage fit into the pregnancy (and the resulting child) – I suspect that was left deliberately vague, but I couldn't quite sort out Erdrich's perspective on biology/evolution and culture that would be interesting to trace through the book.
Lots of stuff on writing and creating that kind of floats through that book without really connecting to the main narrative.
