The Free People's Village

[psocoptera]

The Free People's Village, Sim Kern, 2023 novel. This book was at its best when imagining how an alternate-timeline Gore-led American War on Climate might play out in a realistically racist, imperialist, capitalist, conformist America - cookie-cutter suburbia of the same identical native restorative plantings instead of lawns, constantly replacing appliances for carbon-rebate kickbacks, etc. Some good stuff there. Unfortunately most of it was progressive proselytizing (some of which I even agree with, which didn't make it any more interesting) and descriptions of time spent in protest movements and the punk music scene which the POV character kept claiming were joyous or inspiring but, uh, never read that way to me. (More like "yikes, wouldn't want to be within five miles of that".) There was a cutesy little nod to "the other timeline might even have had a pandemic" - I would read a short story about how Kern's AU would handle a pandemic. In a short story I might not even mind there being no complexity to the characters. :/

Comments

[muccamukk]

Ugh. That's disappointing. I was looking forward to that one.

[psocoptera]

Well, every book its reader, right? I'm sure it's somebody's perfect book - maybe it would click with you in a way it didn't with me! (I'm primarily reviewing for my future self so I can remember what I thought about things, and secondarily for a few friends who probably have a good sense of which of my dumb opinions to ignore by now...)