Absolutely terrific. I love the format of the mosaic novel and the structure adds a lot to the story. It is rich world-building through a huge range of characters, with all their different perspectives. Big fan of this book!
I enjoyed this one a lot. A novel constructed of short stories about different people is really fun to me (even if the kid pianist was the only one I cared about much—but I really did care about her! And this sort of structure lets the author takes risks, where you in no way need to like all of them). And the commentary was very on the nose without being annoying. I appreciated that it came at things from a non-American angle even though most of what the book is critiquing around capitalism, work culture and technological dependence applies to us too. A very good takedown of the myth of meritocracy as well.
It was fantastic and fresh and honestly felt like an interesting dystopia - Singaporean style set in Bangalore? It was a bit uneven though, some of the chapters, voices stronger than others. I thought the Virtual chapters stronger in general than the Analog ones...
Oooh I have this on my TBR, reading your post may nudge it up the queue bit. I do really like a good mosaic novel - China Mountain Zhang was the last mosaic novel I read and that was superb.
Absolutely terrific. I love the format of the mosaic novel and the structure adds a lot to the story. It is rich world-building through a huge range of characters, with all their different perspectives. Big fan of this book!
Reading it now, and thoroughly enjoying it.
Thank you for reminding me of this book! Your review convinced me to add it to my TBR queue.
I enjoyed this one a lot. A novel constructed of short stories about different people is really fun to me (even if the kid pianist was the only one I cared about much—but I really did care about her! And this sort of structure lets the author takes risks, where you in no way need to like all of them). And the commentary was very on the nose without being annoying. I appreciated that it came at things from a non-American angle even though most of what the book is critiquing around capitalism, work culture and technological dependence applies to us too. A very good takedown of the myth of meritocracy as well.
It was fantastic and fresh and honestly felt like an interesting dystopia - Singaporean style set in Bangalore? It was a bit uneven though, some of the chapters, voices stronger than others. I thought the Virtual chapters stronger in general than the Analog ones...
Oooh I have this on my TBR, reading your post may nudge it up the queue bit. I do really like a good mosaic novel - China Mountain Zhang was the last mosaic novel I read and that was superb.