Björn recenserade Ull av Patrik Hammarsten
None
3 stjärnor
Yeah, dystopias are the new black and most of them are a hopelessly bland, unchallenging shadow of what they might need to be, Orwell Light designed to be filmed and passing off general "darkness" as a substitute for actual subversivness. And self-published to boot? Puh-leeeze.
So yes, I'm well prepared to hate this, but Howey wins me over pretty much immediately - the opening section (which was also the original novella, which he then expanded on) is a great start, tossing us right into a situation that carries with it a bunch of, if not hard, then at least intriguing questions. There's been some sort of major disaster, and what's left of mankind is locked in a huge bunker, told the outside lethal, and sentencing people to certain death outside if they question this... And killing them by making them go out and clean the cameras that show people just …
Yeah, dystopias are the new black and most of them are a hopelessly bland, unchallenging shadow of what they might need to be, Orwell Light designed to be filmed and passing off general "darkness" as a substitute for actual subversivness. And self-published to boot? Puh-leeeze.
So yes, I'm well prepared to hate this, but Howey wins me over pretty much immediately - the opening section (which was also the original novella, which he then expanded on) is a great start, tossing us right into a situation that carries with it a bunch of, if not hard, then at least intriguing questions. There's been some sort of major disaster, and what's left of mankind is locked in a huge bunker, told the outside lethal, and sentencing people to certain death outside if they question this... And killing them by making them go out and clean the cameras that show people just HOW uninhabitable the outside world is. It's a brilliant setup that lets Howey play around a lot with the various classes that have formed inside - basically setting up a postmodern Metropolis, with proles vs techheads and a population too comfortable and (rightly) afraid of rocking the boat to challenge the situation. Howey constructs a mostly very believable world, with characters shaped by centuries of fear and survival instinct - fear is easy to weaponise, especially if there really is something to fear and one panicked riot could easily kill off humanity.
So yeah, eventually it does become a bit obvious that 90% of the novel is tacked onto a short story, with a fair amount of padding and a shoehorned Romeo And Juliet plot that mostly seems to be there to provide a crutch. And of course, the end result is mostly about confirming what every other (American) story of the past few decades has already told us (along with some of the usual "information wants to be FREEEE!" bullshit). But Howey's a good enough writer to pull it off, and once he's established the main conflict he delivers one hell of an action ride that's, if not revolutionary, clever enough to make me walk around counting the moments until I have time to pick it up again and keep reading.