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A review by slettlune
The Children of Men by P.D. James
4.0
Usually when I read the book after the movie it's because I fell completely in love with the setting or characters and want to squeeze every last drop of enjoyment out of something.
This wasn't that.
I thought the movie was pretty cool and interesting, and then I kinda forgot about it. It was later that I received this book as a gift with the comment that "hey, both the book and movie are pretty good but they're completely different stories, check it out". And I'm an eternal sap for apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic media, so I did. I checked it out.
This novel turned out to be more my kind of thing than the movie, actually. A world where humanity has gone unexpectedly barren, with increasingly aging generations just waiting for themselves to die out -- sure, interesting in both mediums, but the book paints such a complete picture of what knowledge like that does to the world's population, how it influences their politics, their pop culture, their daily lives, their religions. The characters actually feel secondary to the world-building, which is my only real criticism of the book. But it's a great ride -- slow, pondering, introverted, dark, and not something I think I would have enjoyed quite as much when I was younger and new to the dystopian genre.
I do love the perspective of a main character who is in most ways powerless, but who has close familial ties to one of the most powerful people in the world. Theo's journey from miserable complacency to his pleasure at finally having something to fight and struggle for is pretty damn satisfying.
This wasn't that.
I thought the movie was pretty cool and interesting, and then I kinda forgot about it. It was later that I received this book as a gift with the comment that "hey, both the book and movie are pretty good but they're completely different stories, check it out". And I'm an eternal sap for apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic media, so I did. I checked it out.
This novel turned out to be more my kind of thing than the movie, actually. A world where humanity has gone unexpectedly barren, with increasingly aging generations just waiting for themselves to die out -- sure, interesting in both mediums, but the book paints such a complete picture of what knowledge like that does to the world's population, how it influences their politics, their pop culture, their daily lives, their religions. The characters actually feel secondary to the world-building, which is my only real criticism of the book. But it's a great ride -- slow, pondering, introverted, dark, and not something I think I would have enjoyed quite as much when I was younger and new to the dystopian genre.
I do love the perspective of a main character who is in most ways powerless, but who has close familial ties to one of the most powerful people in the world. Theo's journey from miserable complacency to his pleasure at finally having something to fight and struggle for is pretty damn satisfying.