Title: Vox
Author: Christina Dalcher
Category: Fiction
Page Count: 394
Rating: 4/5
I was quite tempted to limit this review to 100 words because of the premise of the book, but that would annoy me because all of my reviews have the same word count as the number of pages that the books have. If I broke that here, the overall count of how many pages that I’ve read would be.
This is one of those books where I really like the premise but where the actual writing itself wasn’t quite as good as the idea, although it was still good enough to get the job done. I was also kind of surprised by the direction that the story took, because the actual core idea of the book quickly gets overridden.
Basically, it’s set in a dystopian world in which women are limited to 100 words per day and are given an electric shock if they exceed it. The bits that I liked the most were those where we saw the way that that’s affected society, but we sort of quickly lose sight of that and it becomes a story about sticking it to the man.
The main character has her bracelet removed and goes to work taking down the establishment from within while trying to cure the president’s brother of a head injury, thanks to her former calling as a medical doctor. It’s a decent enough premise and stuff, it’s just that I think I prefer stuff like The Handmaid’s Tale where it almost feels as though the government will never be overthrown and the book focuses more on the way that people cope.
Still, I did enjoy this book, even if it was more for the concept and the occasional one-liners than the actual story line itself, which was just okay. It’s also one that I’d recommend if you’re looking to get into more feminist and dystopian fiction, it’s just not really the best place to start.
That’s because it does feel kind of derivative of The Handmaid’s Tale, and more so than most other dystopian feminist fiction does. There’s a quote on the cover by Elle that describes it as “a terrifying reimagining of The Handmaid’s Tale” which kind of sums it up. I’m not sure if it stands on its own two feet. Word count reached.
I totally agree with your review, I’m just preparing my own review for my Youtube channel and I feel the same way. I loved the premise and I thought that it had true potential, but the building of the universe is just incoherent, how can all this happen in just 18 months? (and 6 months of bracelets…). Also, the inner conspiration that they uncover is also irrational and how can they develop all of this in just a few months? (or jean test the cure with just one subject and have this effect in under 10 minutes? I’m not a scientist, but WTF? ?)
PD: Jean is the best connected woman in the universe and also the best neurolinguistic, just an average mother of four, as we can see ?????