15 nov 2025

Based on the premise I really hoped I was going to enjoy this more. I finished it in two days so I guess you could call it a page turner and I enjoyed moments, but overall I was disappointed with the lack of explanations. The curiosity of what the women were going to find on their search for any sign of civilization kept me going but it wasn't satisfied.

It didn't help that I didn't find the narrator sympathetic or likeable. She felt too one-dimensional for me, even when taking her upbringing (or lack thereof) into account. I would have expected more a troubled mind or conflict. If all you know is a cage, how can you be so resolved to get out? That and other things weren't believable for me, like the fact none of her cagemates ever gave her a name, or that the most important thing that governs her thoughts is that she doesn't know men. I find that a strange conclusion to reach that that is the thing you think you miss most after living your entire life in a cage underground. I would be much more occupied with where I am and why instead of wondering what men are like I guess. Part of the reason that falls flat for me is that she dóes know men: all the guards are men. I guess I expected a more feminist approach of a story about 40 women locked up underground without a clue why being watched by male guards with whips on what I assume is a planet B. But later they find out there were also men imprisoned in the same way, so the whole gender thing doesn't really make sense anymore and it's not fleshed out more.

I was somewhat interested in the world and the mystery of the situation, but you get no answers. Every solution I can think of creates problems elsewhere. The most logical explanation would be that it's an experiment for habitable planets, but then why would you imprison 100s of people if you're trying to save the race? It feels like the easy way out to say you're meant to be as confused as the protagonist... It didn't feel like my views and beliefs of the world and of what it means to be alive were challenged enough by the book to excuse leaving so much unanswered. What I really loved about Hand Maid's Tale and The Testaments is that we get a sort of post-tale answers, I think that's what this book really needed. Because of the lack of explanations I'm not sure what the book is trying to say, what its lesson is. The only point I can think it is trying to make is that life isn't worth living if you're just surviving, that life is more than that and needs some kind of impulse or novelty to be worth it. But nothing really moves the protagonist and so I'm not moved as a reader, the group just goes through the motions and it becomes a bit uninspired or redundant. I think I would have been more interested in inter and intrapersonal conflict while they try to figure out how to survive, but instead it's mostly descriptions of the world, the food they find and the fabric their clothes are made of. I liked it a bit more towards the end, but not enough to recommend it.