A review by storytimed
Zeroboxer by Fonda Lee
2.0
THIS BOOK MADE ME MAD...
Zeroboxer never quite engages with its central premise: that the protagonist, Carr Luka, is illegally genetically enhanced and is cheating in every fight he enters. It also completely avoids the secondary theme of interplanetary political tensions. Nor does it dive deep into Carr's psyche, because apparently his special warrior genes allow him to simply choose not to self-reflect.
There are interesting things to dig into around the book. Unfortunately, the narrative lens we have is Carr, who is a shallow, unreflective bro. His girlfriend Risha is a prop, and everyone else he interacts with a stereotype. Nobody ever makes Carr confront the absolute selfishness of what he's doing—instead we get long descriptions of how hot he is and how cool his ad campaigns are.
Would have loved to have seen an alternate version of this book told from the perspective of Enzo, who learns that his childhood friend and hero is a fraud, or Gant and Risha, the Martians who stoke the flames of populist anti-Martian hatred for their marketing campaigns and then cannot quite control the beast they've created.
Instead we get super perfect Gary Stu meathead Carr. UGH!!!
Zeroboxer never quite engages with its central premise: that the protagonist, Carr Luka, is illegally genetically enhanced and is cheating in every fight he enters. It also completely avoids the secondary theme of interplanetary political tensions. Nor does it dive deep into Carr's psyche, because apparently his special warrior genes allow him to simply choose not to self-reflect.
There are interesting things to dig into around the book. Unfortunately, the narrative lens we have is Carr, who is a shallow, unreflective bro. His girlfriend Risha is a prop, and everyone else he interacts with a stereotype. Nobody ever makes Carr confront the absolute selfishness of what he's doing—instead we get long descriptions of how hot he is and how cool his ad campaigns are.
Would have loved to have seen an alternate version of this book told from the perspective of Enzo, who learns that his childhood friend and hero is a fraud, or Gant and Risha, the Martians who stoke the flames of populist anti-Martian hatred for their marketing campaigns and then cannot quite control the beast they've created.
Instead we get super perfect Gary Stu meathead Carr. UGH!!!