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A review by mifterkim
Body After Body by Briar Ripley Page
5.0
This was a really excellent sci-fi/horror novella, but extremely difficult to review due to both its experimental writing style and provocative nature.
I would warn any prospective readers that any content warnings you can think of probably apply to this book - including violence, death, sexual content, body horror (lots), cannibalism and medical- and gender-related trauma.
Body After Body is a self-published science fiction novella which is based on the concept album Moon Colony Bloodbath by John Darnielle and John Vanderslice. I haven't listened to the album, but was recommended the book as a little-read but excellent speculative fiction piece, and I didn't find myself missing out out due to a lack of context. The book definitely stands on its own.
Body After Body is set in a future earth in which climate disaster has left earth much less habitable, and the rich and powerful live on the Moon, on Mars and on satellites orbiting the dying planet. Medical care has become trivial due to the availability of lab-grown tissues and medicines, but this too is available only to the richest in society. Poorer people can be given all necessary and desired medical care of they sign up to have their memories erased, and to tend one of the earth-based laboratories which grow the organs needed for treatment of off-world patients. The novel is set in one of these facilities, with mind-wiped protagonists navigating the crumbling facility they look after and their own identities as conditions in the lab steadily become more untenable.
In many ways this is a classic science fiction fable, with the conceit of the narrative becoming obvious long before it is revealed in the text. However this seems to me more like a deliberate narrative device, serving to make the horror more horrific, and the eventual climax of the story and collapse of the facility feel even more inevitable. The characters are relatable despite their brainwashed states and the sometimes awful things they do, the writing style is beautiful and experimental, and the themes explored are both relevant to the state of the world as the story was written, and personally-relevant to myself. I have rarely come across a speculative fiction book that made me feel quite so seen, and addressed contemporary issues while remaining an engaging story in its own right.
I would highly recommend this book if you are trans, queer, interested in highly-relevant science fiction and have an extremely strong stomach. It was wonderful and horrible, and it will be in my thoughts for a long time.
I would warn any prospective readers that any content warnings you can think of probably apply to this book - including violence, death, sexual content, body horror (lots), cannibalism and medical- and gender-related trauma.
Body After Body is a self-published science fiction novella which is based on the concept album Moon Colony Bloodbath by John Darnielle and John Vanderslice. I haven't listened to the album, but was recommended the book as a little-read but excellent speculative fiction piece, and I didn't find myself missing out out due to a lack of context. The book definitely stands on its own.
Body After Body is set in a future earth in which climate disaster has left earth much less habitable, and the rich and powerful live on the Moon, on Mars and on satellites orbiting the dying planet. Medical care has become trivial due to the availability of lab-grown tissues and medicines, but this too is available only to the richest in society. Poorer people can be given all necessary and desired medical care of they sign up to have their memories erased, and to tend one of the earth-based laboratories which grow the organs needed for treatment of off-world patients. The novel is set in one of these facilities, with mind-wiped protagonists navigating the crumbling facility they look after and their own identities as conditions in the lab steadily become more untenable.
In many ways this is a classic science fiction fable, with the conceit of the narrative becoming obvious long before it is revealed in the text. However this seems to me more like a deliberate narrative device, serving to make the horror more horrific, and the eventual climax of the story and collapse of the facility feel even more inevitable. The characters are relatable despite their brainwashed states and the sometimes awful things they do, the writing style is beautiful and experimental, and the themes explored are both relevant to the state of the world as the story was written, and personally-relevant to myself. I have rarely come across a speculative fiction book that made me feel quite so seen, and addressed contemporary issues while remaining an engaging story in its own right.
I would highly recommend this book if you are trans, queer, interested in highly-relevant science fiction and have an extremely strong stomach. It was wonderful and horrible, and it will be in my thoughts for a long time.