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A review by pushingdessy
Womb City by Tlotlo Tsamaase
Did not finish book. Stopped at 52%.
Thanks to NetGalley and Erewhon Books for approving this ARC in exchange for an honest review!
I was very excited to get the chance to delve into Afrofuturist horror that seemed to deal with so many interesting topics - bodily autonomy, power, feminism, racism, classism, criminality. Unfortunately, I'm choosing to leave this unfinished at 52%.
This had a really intriguing premise with a lot of potential. Set in Motswana, we’re thrust into a dystopic surveillance state where people’s consciousness can body-hop through multiple lifetimes, and certain bodies are microchipped and interrogated under the excuse of preventing potential crime.
We meet Nelah, a famous architect in someone else’s suspect, microchipped body, married to a policeman who reviews her thoughts and activities daily, and waiting for her lab-grown daughter to reach full term. When Nelah and her lover accidentally kill someone, and her microchip fails to report the crime, they think they can get away with it… until a vengeful ghost appears and threatens everyone in Nelah’s life.
This was… a lot. While interesting, the dystopic worldbuilding was incredibly complex. People’s consciousness can be transplanted into someone else’s body, so someone could have had multiple lifetimes and bodies - this in particular was very confusing to me, as I didn’t understand how Nelah could be in her third lifetime but only first body-hop and be 428 years old but also 28.
Even though the narration was very repetitive, some things were just not explained clearly enough and I couldn't make sense of them - it even seemed to contradict what already had been said at points. That might just be that I never understood it in the first place, but I think the poor editing was also to blame.
The character of Nelah was at turns a poor subjugated woman who couldn’t do anything, to a bad bitch who could break the rules and maybe even get away with it. And obviously, that duality can be part of the character’s nuance, but it wasn’t done in a way that felt natural. This was also an issue with the characterizations of Nelah’s husband and her lover. Even Nelah’s relationship with Janish was very confusing at first: I wasn't sure if Nelah had actually been sleeping with him or not, if she liked him or not, if there was another person...
As if all of that wasn’t enough, then there was the issue of the ghost. I believe the story in itself was complex enough without a paranormal horror crossover. There was an attempt at a sci-fi explanation for the existence of a ghost that could cause physical damage, tied to Nelah’s DNA, but again, this was both unnecessarily repeated and yet didn’t make much sense to me.
And on top of all that, there were old gods involved… somehow?? The whole Matsieng references didn’t make a lick of sense to me. Again, everything was just too much, and not delivered in a deft, consistent way.
Maybe I got a very early ARC and some of the bigger issues I found (including misspelled/misused words) were later fixed, but my reading experience suffered a lot from the lack of a more thorough editing process.
I was very excited to get the chance to delve into Afrofuturist horror that seemed to deal with so many interesting topics - bodily autonomy, power, feminism, racism, classism, criminality. Unfortunately, I'm choosing to leave this unfinished at 52%.
This had a really intriguing premise with a lot of potential. Set in Motswana, we’re thrust into a dystopic surveillance state where people’s consciousness can body-hop through multiple lifetimes, and certain bodies are microchipped and interrogated under the excuse of preventing potential crime.
We meet Nelah, a famous architect in someone else’s suspect, microchipped body, married to a policeman who reviews her thoughts and activities daily, and waiting for her lab-grown daughter to reach full term. When Nelah and her lover accidentally kill someone, and her microchip fails to report the crime, they think they can get away with it… until a vengeful ghost appears and threatens everyone in Nelah’s life.
This was… a lot. While interesting, the dystopic worldbuilding was incredibly complex. People’s consciousness can be transplanted into someone else’s body, so someone could have had multiple lifetimes and bodies - this in particular was very confusing to me, as I didn’t understand how Nelah could be in her third lifetime but only first body-hop and be 428 years old but also 28.
Even though the narration was very repetitive, some things were just not explained clearly enough and I couldn't make sense of them - it even seemed to contradict what already had been said at points. That might just be that I never understood it in the first place, but I think the poor editing was also to blame.
The character of Nelah was at turns a poor subjugated woman who couldn’t do anything, to a bad bitch who could break the rules and maybe even get away with it. And obviously, that duality can be part of the character’s nuance, but it wasn’t done in a way that felt natural. This was also an issue with the characterizations of Nelah’s husband and her lover. Even Nelah’s relationship with Janish was very confusing at first: I wasn't sure if Nelah had actually been sleeping with him or not, if she liked him or not, if there was another person...
As if all of that wasn’t enough, then there was the issue of the ghost. I believe the story in itself was complex enough without a paranormal horror crossover. There was an attempt at a sci-fi explanation for the existence of a ghost that could cause physical damage, tied to Nelah’s DNA, but again, this was both unnecessarily repeated and yet didn’t make much sense to me.
And on top of all that, there were old gods involved… somehow?? The whole Matsieng references didn’t make a lick of sense to me. Again, everything was just too much, and not delivered in a deft, consistent way.
Maybe I got a very early ARC and some of the bigger issues I found (including misspelled/misused words) were later fixed, but my reading experience suffered a lot from the lack of a more thorough editing process.