Julia Slaughter

Review

Rating: 7

Have you ever been around a group of people that are good friends with a long history? The kind of friends that end up speaking in a short hand, so even though you understand the words you feel like you’re missing some of the deeper meaning. For me reading this book was kind of like that. It was “recommended to me” by Amazon when I was looking at The Boneshaker and high on a whole new genre of books opening before me and seeming interesting, I bought it. It said it was Bacigalupi’s debut novel but as I was reading it I kept feeling like I was missing something. Terms like “Calorie Man” and references to an ethnic cleansing seemed to pop up over and over again, “real fans” of Bacigalupi’s work realized that these references were made to short stories that were published in the book Pump Six, but I just kept going back to the Amazon page wondering where the other book (or books) in this series were.

I enjoyed the complex characters and while I can’t say that I enjoyed the portrayal of the future – I can say that I was intrigued by the bleak future that he portrayed. I am contemplating going back and reading the short stories and reading this book again so that I don’t keep getting pulled out of the story with that feeling that I’m missing something.