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Piercing Maybe
NAMED TO KIRKUS REVIEWS' BEST BOOKS OF 2018 You've never seen a true human being. No one has, because for several millennia a hidden society has conducted a clandestine effort to “diminish” the entire population, biochemically changing humans into lesser beings while they’re still in the womb. But now the Diminishing Act is up for renewal and Andra Barger, a last-minute addition to the voting council, has an opportunity to overturn the law. It seems like an easy call… until she learns her cancer-stricken brother, the fate of an elusive culture, and possibly her own life depend on the council’s good graces. Meanwhile her conscience—and Andra’s only chance of having an unaltered child—demands an opposition vote. Will she vote for… or against… the horrific Act?
337 pages, Paperback
Published August 10, 2018
17 people are currently reading
37 people want to read
About the author
Dan Cray
13 books3 followersDan Cray is the author of THE REALITY MELTDOWN, MOTHER TONGUE, and PIERCING MAYBE, which was named to Kirkus Reviews' Best Books of 2018. In nonfiction, he wrote SOARING STONES for National Geographic Books and spent twenty-seven years as a freelance science journalist, reporting more than sixty Time magazine cover stories and sharing a National Headliner Award. He holds a UCLA English degree and lives in Los Angeles.
Visit him at www.dancraybooks.com
Visit him at www.dancraybooks.com
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 16, 2018
This book, while scientific in its approach, was too confusing for me to continue, I am sure many other people loved this book. I have seen many mixed reviews about it and felt it might be a good fit for me. However, I could not get past chapter 5 without being totally and utterly lost.
August 6, 2019
That's one of the most original books I got on a sale. It starts weird and it build on that in a very entertaining and engaging way. It's written well, there are some minor oddities (omissions?), but in the end, for me the story beats them. It's just that crazy. What I really like is that you pay for the whole thing, the book finishes at the end and that's it. Honestly, I wasn't that surprised by the end, I actually thought maybe the author forgot what he wrote in the previous pages :) So it was satisfactory in a way. In any case, I really enjoyed the story. Maybe I'd liked more developed world building (a lot of the family secrets remain a secret, as well as the council plans, etc) but even like it is, it's still good.
August 4, 2019
A confusing book to read. Character development was poor and the characters really didn't tell the story. I read the book to the end and was very underwhelmed. This might have been an interesting story line but it just wasn't well developed at all.
August 13, 2018
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Thanks to NetGalley for the copy.
The premise of this book is fascinating: human babies are biologically modified in the womb through a process called ‘diminishing’, and it’s what it says on the tin: babies are made to be lesser before they’re even born. Our main character Andra struggles with this concept more than her fellow diminishers do, as they are Cinüe, and they have all the rules and the knowledge and the history and Andra, a human who is being forced to be a diminisher because her brother is dying of cancer and the eldest child is supposed to do it. It is here that things get disappointing: I cannot give you much more context here, mostly because the plot was… very confusing.
There was simply too much going on - there were some sort of hypnotism/shadow manipulating powers, ‘diminishing’, a secret race, a secret council with her secret ancestor in charge. Not to mention the other massive theme introduced later on that just adds to the massive list of things this book tries (and fails) to incorporate. Andra has no idea what is going on, and neither do we.
The concept of diminishing was very, very, vague at first and I feel like I started understanding more about it much later than the author intended: it took me a long time to realise that humans didn’t know about diminishing, or even the existence of Cinüe. Maybe I should have realised this sooner, maybe Dan Cray just wasn’t clear enough.
It also took me a loooong time to realise that this wasn’t set in the future, and that this took place in the present day. I thought the arcane tech was a future development, and I feel like Cray didn’t make his setting very clear at the start — basically, setting the scene a little bit better could save future-readers a lot of confusion.
There was room for some interesting development on the Cinüe being undercover as world leaders or celebrities: this could have been a fun avenue to explore instead of adding yet another fantastical element to a story already overflowing with unexplained phenomena.
I found Andra and Cristina’s friendship to be forced from the start: they are supposed to be close, but Andra thought of her negatively a lot, e.g. when she’s internally complaining that Cristina treats her as a child. From here on out, their friendship was almost incomprehensible to me: they clearly did not work well as friends, with Andra doubting if she can trust her, to the decisions made.
This wasn’t the only relationship I found to be lacking, though. In all actuality, I found Andra and Cristina’s friendship to be more compelling than any other relationship Andra had in this series. Not much was explained about the troubles with her mother, and all was resolved much too quickly and easily with them. Wade was just… there, and I didn’t feel any sparks between him and Andra, despite wanting to. The opportunity for relationship development was there in the time skip that takes place around halfway through the novel. But most of all, the relationship I found most disappointing was that of Jackson and Andra. To avoid spoilers, I won’t say too much — just that I couldn’t even remember that Jackson was Andra’s brother when he popped up later in the story. Even just a nice memory of their childhood from Andra could have improved this!
The time-skip was also an issue for me, not just because of the missed opportunities to develop characters more, but also because it felt like a cop-out, almost too easy to skip that time and then keep the secrets of what happened during it from the reader and from Andra’s narrative until it becomes relevant to the story. Thankfully, the latter happens rather quickly so it isn’t too unbelievable, but was a little disappointing nonetheless.
There was also a MASSIVE issue I had with possibly the biggest plot point: and that was that, within the universe Dan Cray created, it simply made no sense. The Cinüe have had their laws for 180,000 years and not one human has ever evaded certain laws. Yet Andra manages to. With no explanation of how it happened, just vague references to the time skip.
Enough of my problems with the plot and characterisation though, let’s have one last random gripe before I wrap this up! The council was called the Sugar Dandruff Council and I just kept laughing every time they said its name. This story takes itself seriously, so such a name just stood out and I couldn’t stop laughing whenever I read it.
Overall, this book clearly did not meet my expectations. I found myself struggling to get through it, though I was determined to finish it and I’m glad I did. Despite all my issues with the story, I did like how the end turned out (even though the way the characters got to the end was both way too ridiculous and felt too easy). Unfortunately, I don’t see myself reading another book by Dan Cray, but with some heavy editing and some revision of all the fantastical elements, this book has the potential to be… well, better than it was.
The premise of this book is fascinating: human babies are biologically modified in the womb through a process called ‘diminishing’, and it’s what it says on the tin: babies are made to be lesser before they’re even born. Our main character Andra struggles with this concept more than her fellow diminishers do, as they are Cinüe, and they have all the rules and the knowledge and the history and Andra, a human who is being forced to be a diminisher because her brother is dying of cancer and the eldest child is supposed to do it. It is here that things get disappointing: I cannot give you much more context here, mostly because the plot was… very confusing.
There was simply too much going on - there were some sort of hypnotism/shadow manipulating powers, ‘diminishing’, a secret race, a secret council with her secret ancestor in charge. Not to mention the other massive theme introduced later on that just adds to the massive list of things this book tries (and fails) to incorporate. Andra has no idea what is going on, and neither do we.
The concept of diminishing was very, very, vague at first and I feel like I started understanding more about it much later than the author intended: it took me a long time to realise that humans didn’t know about diminishing, or even the existence of Cinüe. Maybe I should have realised this sooner, maybe Dan Cray just wasn’t clear enough.
It also took me a loooong time to realise that this wasn’t set in the future, and that this took place in the present day. I thought the arcane tech was a future development, and I feel like Cray didn’t make his setting very clear at the start — basically, setting the scene a little bit better could save future-readers a lot of confusion.
There was room for some interesting development on the Cinüe being undercover as world leaders or celebrities: this could have been a fun avenue to explore instead of adding yet another fantastical element to a story already overflowing with unexplained phenomena.
I found Andra and Cristina’s friendship to be forced from the start: they are supposed to be close, but Andra thought of her negatively a lot, e.g. when she’s internally complaining that Cristina treats her as a child. From here on out, their friendship was almost incomprehensible to me: they clearly did not work well as friends, with Andra doubting if she can trust her, to the decisions made.
This wasn’t the only relationship I found to be lacking, though. In all actuality, I found Andra and Cristina’s friendship to be more compelling than any other relationship Andra had in this series. Not much was explained about the troubles with her mother, and all was resolved much too quickly and easily with them. Wade was just… there, and I didn’t feel any sparks between him and Andra, despite wanting to. The opportunity for relationship development was there in the time skip that takes place around halfway through the novel. But most of all, the relationship I found most disappointing was that of Jackson and Andra. To avoid spoilers, I won’t say too much — just that I couldn’t even remember that Jackson was Andra’s brother when he popped up later in the story. Even just a nice memory of their childhood from Andra could have improved this!
The time-skip was also an issue for me, not just because of the missed opportunities to develop characters more, but also because it felt like a cop-out, almost too easy to skip that time and then keep the secrets of what happened during it from the reader and from Andra’s narrative until it becomes relevant to the story. Thankfully, the latter happens rather quickly so it isn’t too unbelievable, but was a little disappointing nonetheless.
There was also a MASSIVE issue I had with possibly the biggest plot point: and that was that, within the universe Dan Cray created, it simply made no sense. The Cinüe have had their laws for 180,000 years and not one human has ever evaded certain laws. Yet Andra manages to. With no explanation of how it happened, just vague references to the time skip.
Enough of my problems with the plot and characterisation though, let’s have one last random gripe before I wrap this up! The council was called the Sugar Dandruff Council and I just kept laughing every time they said its name. This story takes itself seriously, so such a name just stood out and I couldn’t stop laughing whenever I read it.
Overall, this book clearly did not meet my expectations. I found myself struggling to get through it, though I was determined to finish it and I’m glad I did. Despite all my issues with the story, I did like how the end turned out (even though the way the characters got to the end was both way too ridiculous and felt too easy). Unfortunately, I don’t see myself reading another book by Dan Cray, but with some heavy editing and some revision of all the fantastical elements, this book has the potential to be… well, better than it was.
August 12, 2018
What is a life, living as a diminished human being? Why should we live like this? Andra Barger is one of these agents who diminishes human being at the conception stage in their line of birth. What if everything you've known is a lie.
Andra Barger is a diminisher agent, she comes for the women who are pregnant and with a flick their child is harmless. But who is Andra to keep doing this to women. Then with one call, everything changes and she now has the chance to vote, to make the changes, to build a future for everyone? But not everyone agrees and now Andra is on the run from everyone she has ever loved.
Dan Cray has taken a old concept and turned it into something new. This story is something truly fascinating and extraordinary. I can not wait until the next book in the series and I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who loves a story about family, rebellion, struggle and consequences.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews