The Core of the Sun

The Core of the Sun

2013 • 304 pages

Ratings3

Average rating3.3

15

This was a fun read. A dystopian misogynist Finland where women are nurtured and genetically bred into dumb submissive blondes, eager to please their fairy-tale future husbands. Naturally our heroine is a rebel, secretly revolting against the status quo. She's also addicted to chili, which is the only drug left on the market. She bands together with a drug dealer and a group of growers, hoping to escape while desperately trying to keep her loved ones safe. Then the plot goes off into a bit of magical realism that's very entertaining. What I found a bit cheap and irritating, was the the dumb bimbo stereotype callout considering this subgroup of women does exist in most cultures. There was something slightly vicious about it, that could have fit more into a satire than a dystopia. (Though, this probably qualifies as satirical dystopia). One thing that saddened me was, that the grandma didn't even try to educate the sister into a conscious non-drone. Was the statement of the novel, that it's all nature and not nurture? But I really enoyed how the novel wove eugenics and experiments into the difference between the sexes (the toy truck test) into the world building. (A novelization for the [b:Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference 8031168 Delusions of Gender How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference Cordelia Fine https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1348833681s/8031168.jpg 12635310] readers)Small detail: I would have preferred if the main character's synaesthesia would have stayed unmentioned. It was a neat detail up until it was explicitly called out.

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