Vox

Dystopian fiction. Fascinating premise. Super read that I have recommended to many YA readers.

Loved the concept and how it didn’t feel too far from reality. I didn’t like how rushed the last third was, felt like it could of easily been 2 books.

It took me a while to get in to this one, but I had heard really good things so I persevered. I am glad I did as the plot picks up pace about 50 pages in. I felt the characters were well written and multi dimensional and the story, which is not as far from the realms of possibility as I'd like, was well told. As with all books of this nature, I would prefer to have more than one viewpoint, but that's just me.

At first, the premise of the book seems totally unreal and I thought that I wouldn’t like this novel, however the author tells the story so well you can actually imagine people just allowing this to happen.
You can see how simple it would be for young people to become indoctrinated and for a dystopian society to be created. I really enjoyed it and found it totally addictive.

The setting is "present day" and the ultra right winged fundamentalist Christians have somehow risen to have the power seat over the political and legal branches of the American government. Woman have had all rights stripped even the right to speak. This dystopian story harkens back to life when women were not allowed to work outside the home, except for doing womanly jobs like cooking, cleaning, child rearing, not allowed to inherit money or property, not allowed to travel alone, not allowed to vote, indeed not even allowed to speak their minds. The world that Christina Dalcher presents to us in her debut novel is even worse. Females are only allowed to speak 100 words per day. On the 101st word they receive an electric shock that gradually increases in voltage with each word after that. Their entire voice is disappearing and they must teach their female children from infancy not to speak. This would be a shocking tale to read but given what has gone on during the past 4 years of Trumpian life where the mores and values of the entitled, self important White Male Power behaviors were taking hold it is double frightening. Before one could say "What a novel idea". Now one has to think this very well could be happening without anyone really noticing. It's extremely frightening and terrifying.
This is a thriller with a brilliant heroine not just a whining book of complaining. It is a well written book that I "enjoyed" as a novel as well as a tale of caution. I highly recommend it.

This book is set in the USA in a time when “America’s first black president has just handed over the keys to a new man” (it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work that one out!). With this change in leadership come some dramatic changes. Women are only allowed to utter 100 words per day, infractions being rewarded with a severe electric shock. They are not allowed to work, or to have bank accounts or travel and schoolgirls are no longer taught to read and write. The government wants to mirror the way things were in bygone eras when men did all the work and made all the decisions, while women had no voice (literally) and were restricted to cooking, cleaning and baby-making. Their stance is justified by Biblical references, taken out of context. Understandably not everybody is happy with these changes and some are prepared to risk life and limb to get women their voice back.

Despite my allegations of being a confirmed hater of Sci-fi, I really enjoyed this book. Although it is Sci-fiesque in nature, there were no aliens or spaceships and the timeframe was pretty much “now”. This meant that ordinary people were living in situations which I could relate to because the world they live in is pretty similar to the one I inhabit. The chilling part is what the powers that be have done to that world. And the really terrifying thing about it is that it is so entirely plausible. It seems like a very small step to go from the society we now live in to this alternative universe run by bigoted, mysoginistic men. It is a very scary regime indeed but when consideration is given to the behaviour and attitudes of some men in positions of authority who have been shown to hold very similar views in recent years, how unrealistic is it really? The book is written in the form of a thriller, and it is both fascinating and gripping as well as disturbing, uncomfortable and thought-provoking. It does not delve deeply into the philosophical rights and wrongs of the new regime but it doesn’t really need to – I can work those out for myself. A pretty unique concept and a very interesting read.

There were a few negative points but nothing major enough to mar my enjoyment. Sometimes things don’t quite add up but taking the book as a whole, these can be glossed over and ignored. One example of this was that television programmes were regularly interrupted to parade miscreants in front of the captive audience, for the purposes of both public humiliation and, presumably, as a warning to potential offenders of what is in store for them. These people would make repeat appearances over a couple of days but, despite the size of the population in the USA, they always seemed to be people who were part of the story. There were also times when I got a little lost with the plot, possibly because of my limited knowledge of the science involved or possibly because it was just flawed.

I would thoroughly recommend this book, even to people who, like myself, claim they do not like sci-fi. It’s an easy read, but not necessarily a comfortable one.

An easy to read, gripping novel which was thought provoking and scary. In the year of the 'Me too' campaign, how far could this ever have been considered by the high-up authorities, to rid women of their status in life, including language? Another question to pose is how much do we allow science to dictate and take over our lives? Just let nature take its course. A book to recommend.

A book that definitely made me think!
Dalcher describes a disturbing view of the future, one in which women are cruelly treated and lack the rights for which their forebears had fought so hard. An improbable twist at the end leads to an unexpected conclusion.
Would recommend.

OMG. You have to read this book. I found reading it really difficult at first because of the way women are treated in it but pressed on hoping things would get better. Or I'd get used to it. Or something. Before I was half way through I was totally gripped and couldn't put it down. It made me furious, it made me happy, it made me think. And it was a page turner. It's our next book group read and I'm so looking forward to hearing what everybody else in Durham Book Swap thinks about it and discussing some of the issues it raises. Not least the current situations in USA and Brexit Britain.....