“Evoking the grittiness of Mad Max and the idealism of Sense8, this absorbing sci-fi debut is a dynamic vision of the fluidity of identity. With Unity, breakout author Elly Bangs has created a prescient, moving, and unforgettable adventure that expands upon human consciousness and its possibilities.
“Imagine Neuromancer and Lilith’s Brood conceived a baby while listening to My Chemical Romance and then that baby was adopted by Ghost in the Shell and Blue Submarine no. 6. The baby’s name is Unity.”
—Meredith Russo, author of If I Were Your Girl
Danae, a tech servant in the underwater enclave of Bloom City, is haunted by a grief that cannot be contained in a single body. But while in the city, her fractured self cannot be returned to the larger collective of beings to whom she once belonged.
Unable to tolerate separation any longer, Danae plans to escape the city with her lover, Naoto. Just in time to avoid disaster, they hire the enigmatic ex-mercenary Alexei to guide them.
But returning to Danae’s home means fleeing across the otherworldly beauty of the postapocalyptic Southwest. Meanwhile, an old stalker has picked up her trail, and a new foe has put a bounty on her head.
Unbeknownst to any of them, Danae, Alexi, and Naoto are also in their own pursuit—of a completely new configuration of mutual understanding.”
I got an ARC of this book.
I didn’t finish this book. I got about half way through and realized I had no clue what was going on. Most of the conversations were so far above my head that I was finding myself skimming more than reading.
The sci-fi concepts were not explained or they weren’t explained well enough that I had any clue what was happening. I kept feeling like it was a survival horror video game that makes you explore to have all the details. Something like Silent Hill or Bioshock. All the real flavor of the plot is hidden around. You can get a basic story without finding any of those details, but it isn’t the story that made people fall in love with the series. That is how this book reads. I am getting a basic plot, but I am missing all of the flavor. How am I supposed to love a story when it feels like I am missing so much of it?
I didn’t know what a unity was or how it worked, yet the characters did. So I felt like I was being dragged along, but not wanted. I had no clue about the civil war or the grey. Every time there was conflict things never felt real, because some unexplained sci-fi element came in to save the day or make things worse. It felt like all the reasons I hate magic in books, but with nanobots instead.
The writing was lovely and the idea was one I really wanted to love, it just didn’t work for me. I either missed the parts that would have saved this book for me or they just weren’t there. It might work better for you, but it was a bit too sci-fi for me.
2.5 out of 5 stars. I would maybe recommend this book.
You can buy the book here.
~Isaiah
MI Book Reviews 