I tell people I don't like dystopias, then I go and read them again and again. What can I say? There are a lot of good ones--including this one, even if it's not a great one. Atwood of A Handmaid's Tale is the strongest living prose stylist I've read. Ayn Rand's Anthem (don't sneer) is almost a prose poem--even two liberal friends of mine admit to liking it. Huxley's Brave New World and Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 both have many striking, quotable lines. And Orwell's 1984 has so many phrases that have entered the language like "newspeak" and "Big Brother." Each have aspects to their societies that are distinct and memorable; Anthem, Fahrenheit 451 and 1984 are of the strain that tries to control the mind, particularly through language.
Levin's future world hews closer to Brave New World with its control of the body through genetics and drugs. It doesn't feel as distinct a world as the other, and though with a clean style doesn't seem to be as strongly written as the above. Also one thing--and I'm no Christian, but it bugged me that one of the four ideologies that rules this society is supposed to be that of Jesus Christ (that of Karl Marx another) but, other than a nod at the value of "helping" your fellow man and knocks against selfishness, this doesn't strike me as remotely Christian in feel or design. That's one reason why it doesn't get a five.
It dipped below a four mostly for what happens from page 192 to 194--and then what doesn't happen. Our hero rapes his love and she tells him not a day later not to feel awful, that "It was perfectly natural." If I thought this was meant as commentary on how that controlled society pushed him, and if it had negative consequences for him, her and their relationship, I'd be fine with it--but you get the feeling that it's what it's said to be--something "perfectly natural." In which case, either Levin really needs to get a clue, or it's sloppy writing. But I don't see the need for the scene if there aren't consequences, and it bugged me.
But the novel is short, well-paced, kept me turning pages and had several surprises--it went in directions I wasn't expecting it to go. So good book, even if not great book.
