The Divers' Game

The prose was not stylized enough for it to be satisfying for me and I didn't feel like there was any kind of a sufficient plot to make it otherwise engaging. Even the mundane cruelties of dystopia came across as tired of themselves in this one...

Neutral 2.5 rounded up.

The Diver's Game is a novella length book of short stories forming a mosaic novel. In the world of the book certain people (descendants of immigrants) have been deemed subhuman and it is considered legal for full citizens to kill them. A fine premise for a dystopian novel, but Jesse Bell constructed this book in a way that just didn't work for this reader. The book consists of a series of stories featuring different characters looking at different aspects of the world with few instances of direct overlap. Furthermore many of these stories just didn't develop enough or have a clear enough sense of resolution for my taste.

I don't know if they were well or poorly written, the first story was loaded with exposition (a teacher explaining the world to a class, and thus the reader), but it seemed that the author enjoyed setting up a story only to deny the reader an opportunity to find out what happens. Perhaps this was Ball's way of putting the reader in the shoes of the subhuman residents who could be gassed at any moment? If so, it's a bit clever, but I still didn't care for it.

That's another thing, the means by which pats (full citizens) killed non-pats was by opening canisters of gas. Seems implausible. Too many ways that could go wrong or have unintended victims.

Overall, the dystopian world was clearly a thinly veiled metaphor for many contemporary issues, and perhaps this book is Ball's grim prediction for what our world might look like in a few generations. As interesting as that is, it doesn't excuse the lackluster means by which he told the story...or more precisely, the lack of story. That's actually the whole problem, the book is much more concept than story.

Also, the formatting is very odd. He puts frequent line breaks and even page breaks in the book, resulting in lots of blank space throughout. That's why I said it was novella length, I bet if it was formatted like a normal book it would be numerous pages shorter.

In brief, I think it was an interesting concept and would have been interested in reading one of these stories written as an actual novel with a clear sense of resolution, but this book just didn't work for me.

P.S. If anyone would like to read a mosaic novel where the structure works more effectively, check out Coyote Songs by Gambino Iglesias. It's a horror book and also explores themes of xenophobia.

Very allegorical, lots of metaphor for our world. I think the gas masks were an interesting choice, but not one that really worked for me. I liked the commentary on society, but I feel like the characters were used as devices rather than people, and would have preferred this book to be more of a character study rather than disjointed stories about people we aren't made to care about.