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Natural Selection
In the Hivosphere, citizens are ranked according to a strict social hierarchy. At the top stand the smart, attractive and healthy, but in such a tenuous society, nobody’s place is secure and the possibility of downgrading is always around the corner. Receiving a poor sexual performance rating, developing a new health condition, or simply aging, can permanently land one in the lower ranks of the Hive, among the assistants and menial laborers—or worse, the “useless.”
To Cleopatra Wolf, this couldn't be a better world. As a member of the elite class A, she flits from one partner to another and enjoys her privileges, until the time comes when she must fulfill her civilian duty and begin her assigned pregnancy with a donor whose genetic profile has been carefully selected for her.
Archibald Tennyson, a photo editor from class C, is forbidden to “create” because of his status, but in the privacy of his home he secretly, rebelliously strives to find meaning in his life through art. His eventual downgrade leads him to a group of like-minded individuals, and the heart of an underclass revolution.
Marigold Hammer walks all day long with the useless in an underground room, generating electricity for the privileged masses above. Through a perverse game, she is offered a unique chance to win back her position at the textile factory. All she must do is fight one of her fellows—to the death.
Sthenos Lyle, young prince and heir of the optimal lineage, has one wish: like his older brother, Deimos, he wants to become a glider pilot and hunt savages on the outside, the wildest part of the continent. But on their first trip out of their Hive, an accident damages the machine and Sthenos is swept away on the current of a river, far from civilization.
Before long, cracks emerge in the structure of Hive 44. Will the underclass revolutionaries succeed in overthrowing the status quo? Or will a world order that favors the beautiful and powerful prevail?
To Cleopatra Wolf, this couldn't be a better world. As a member of the elite class A, she flits from one partner to another and enjoys her privileges, until the time comes when she must fulfill her civilian duty and begin her assigned pregnancy with a donor whose genetic profile has been carefully selected for her.
Archibald Tennyson, a photo editor from class C, is forbidden to “create” because of his status, but in the privacy of his home he secretly, rebelliously strives to find meaning in his life through art. His eventual downgrade leads him to a group of like-minded individuals, and the heart of an underclass revolution.
Marigold Hammer walks all day long with the useless in an underground room, generating electricity for the privileged masses above. Through a perverse game, she is offered a unique chance to win back her position at the textile factory. All she must do is fight one of her fellows—to the death.
Sthenos Lyle, young prince and heir of the optimal lineage, has one wish: like his older brother, Deimos, he wants to become a glider pilot and hunt savages on the outside, the wildest part of the continent. But on their first trip out of their Hive, an accident damages the machine and Sthenos is swept away on the current of a river, far from civilization.
Before long, cracks emerge in the structure of Hive 44. Will the underclass revolutionaries succeed in overthrowing the status quo? Or will a world order that favors the beautiful and powerful prevail?
244 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 31, 2018
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
April 11, 2018
Nice reading (the cover got me) :
As a dystopia, this novel explores some known aspects of Brave New World, but with an assumed sex touch as in Anne Rice's "Exit to Eden" (pseudonym Anne Rampling). I'm not implying it should only be read with one hand, but as you may expect with the title and the description, the book's mythology evolves around "purpose matting"... and "sex slavery" :
Keep calm : It's definitively not the usual "shitty" BDSM romance - quite the contrary : Here, the sexually-useful-are-sexually-purposeful and... (the sexually-useless-are-domestically-purposeful-for-cleaning-all-kinds-of-shits,-"fortunately"-for-the-greater-good).
Regarding the nature of "consent", I would not recommend this book to everyone : Some serious taboos subjects emerge in the structure of Hive 44... in an totally impolitically correct manner, UNIVERSALLY ; Some readers could crack :
As a classical tragedy, it is superbly written right from start to finish : Overall - "for the greater good", NATURAL SELECTION's message is closer to Friz Lang's METROPOLIS(1927) final inter-title : "The Mediator Between the Head and the Hands Must Be the Heart"...
BUT WITH A TWIST.
MY RATING : FIVE STAR
POLITICALLY CORRECT RATING : FOUR STAR (If Misery Chastain had wrote it, Annie Wilkes' would eventually crack his legs)
As a dystopia, this novel explores some known aspects of Brave New World, but with an assumed sex touch as in Anne Rice's "Exit to Eden" (pseudonym Anne Rampling). I'm not implying it should only be read with one hand, but as you may expect with the title and the description, the book's mythology evolves around "purpose matting"... and "sex slavery" :
Keep calm : It's definitively not the usual "shitty" BDSM romance - quite the contrary : Here, the sexually-useful-are-sexually-purposeful and... (the sexually-useless-are-domestically-purposeful-for-cleaning-all-kinds-of-shits,-"fortunately"-for-the-greater-good).
Regarding the nature of "consent", I would not recommend this book to everyone : Some serious taboos subjects emerge in the structure of Hive 44... in an totally impolitically correct manner, UNIVERSALLY ; Some readers could crack :
As a classical tragedy, it is superbly written right from start to finish : Overall - "for the greater good", NATURAL SELECTION's message is closer to Friz Lang's METROPOLIS(1927) final inter-title : "The Mediator Between the Head and the Hands Must Be the Heart"...
BUT WITH A TWIST.
MY RATING : FIVE STAR
POLITICALLY CORRECT RATING : FOUR STAR (If Misery Chastain had wrote it, Annie Wilkes' would eventually crack his legs)
Displaying 1 of 1 review