Christina Dalcher has made this one of my harder reviews to write.
Note, I was provided this ARC by Berkley Publishing via Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.
I was so excited for this book! The premise came off ominous and immediately peeked my interest. This did mean I went in with extremely high hopes and I think that worked against me.
Vox follows the story of Dr. Jean McClellan and her life now that women have been silenced. Now that her young daughter doesn’t learn reading and writing and women are limited to 100 words a day. It deals with how this affects not only her world but the coming generation. It’s very much a ‘what if’ scenario on if you don’t keep involved and don’t stay involved FULLY with the world around you.
“Think about waking up one morning and finding you don’t have a voice in anything.”
― Christina Dalcher, Vox
Let’s do a ‘no spoilers’ type review.
The first 10% of the book is a solid internal debate. It also was a little discouraging for me. It was very sensationalized to the point that it took from the story for me. I adore dystopian and especially those involving government overlord type worlds, and where it all went wrong. However, lead your audience to it. Show them the danger and warnings that are multifaceted. This book is extremely direct and eliminated my ability to think on it profoundly, instead everything was spelled out to me to the point that I felt like I should hate all things. I don’t like hating all things. No one likes a villain that’s not complex. I like the complexity, I like the shades of grey in morality. So for me the strict structure of black and white for a fast approaching, fictional future was disconcerting.
To sum up my main thought, this book is angry. It’s an angry book.
That being said, I did enjoy the book. It was a page turner and I absorbed it quickly and avidly. It made me feel hopeless though. Instead of empowering me it made me feel sad. I also thrive on character development and good dialogue which for this book was not the strong point. In fact, half the time I would have preferred to live outside the main character, Jean’s, head in any way.
Vox is an interesting premise that could have been executed a tad more subtly. I do think the overall book is still good but the main character and side characters fell flat and short for me. I will also say the ending wasn’t my favorite.
- Overall Rating: 2.5 Stars
- Plot: 4 Stars
- Character Development: 2 Stars
- Dialogue: 2 Stars
- Writing: 2 Stars
I really loved the idea and world behind this book. The author, I hope, will improve and continue to write, as her original idea was beautiful. I’d recommend this to anyone that enjoys political intrigue and possibly dystopian.
~Ash
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