Yours for the Taking

Though I have been gravitating (PUN INTENDED, though it barely works) to science fiction recently, I do not usually pick up climate change fiction/cli fi. I read to escape reality, not face its worst case scenarios head-on. However, I listened to a Libby sample of this, and it hooked me right away.

Yours for the Taking imagines a United States a few decades into the future. Many of the attempts to stave off climate change were too little, too late. One such attempt was introduced by a wildly wealthy corporate feminist named Jacqueline. She created refillables, a setup where consumers have their items refilled by drones that fly in to snag and top off your empty toothpaste tube or olive oil bottle. I greatly desire for refillables to exist. I should be able to walk into any grocery store and buy one teaspoon of star anise and that's it. LET ME DO IT.

The combination of generational wealth and refillables wealth has given Jacqueline a tremendous amount of power. So when the global government decides to create a handful of hubs called Inside, she claims one as her own. And without the knowledge or permission of the government, she decides to run her Inside a little bit different. A little bit without any men.

Chapters of this story alternate between a small group different characters over the course of decades. We have chapters set on Earth (outside and Inside), and in space. We see the routines people fall into and the pockets of joy and meaning they find for themselves in the most desperate of circumstances. We see how people adapt and survive and (easily, frankly) overcome the violent, self-serving tendencies so many of us fear are inevitable in any crisis.

The pacing and the reactions of character are both very strange. Things come to a head so suddenly and absolutely towards the very end. There does not seem to be an internal struggle or the pure panic of your life being a lie. People's moral judgments are immediately accepted as they pivot course entirely. The drugs explain some, though certainly not all of this, and lazily at that. I think Jacqueline is let off easy (obviously just kill her, I say as someone opposed to capital punishment lol), and also has too much pinned on her. That is not how culture works. Why wasn't Ava more upset with Olympia? Why did Olympia calmly go along with everything until one moment when she didn't because she was horny? Why kill Ellory, one of the few men (really, boys) of color we know of like that, as some fridging plot device? I kind of liked that the ending was open-ended, but because of the nothing turned to everything turned to nothing again leading up to it, it was difficult for me to keep buying what was happening. And also, what a cop-out to just fade to black on Jacqueline's entire venture. Everyone seemed to be underreacting, or speeding through processing any new information. I can't figure out what it was trying to communicate about power and gender and a just society, because everything turned slippery, as if I was supposed to accept that certain characters were wholly good and others wholly bad. Many of the big reveals were embarrassingly obvious. Ava, if anything, felt like a Bella Swan-esque self-insert. I did grow attached to some of the characters with time, but I don't think the depth of any of them was enough to carry us through the gaping plot holes. I can't explain why I read it so eagerly when all of that is true, but I cannot pretend it hit hard.

One of those cases of the premise not living up to its execution. I felt the same way about [b:The Power|29751398|The Power|Naomi Alderman|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1462814013l/29751398.SY75.jpg|50108451]. Fans of [b:The Measure|58884736|The Measure|Nikki Erlick|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1656427584l/58884736.SY75.jpg|88976673] might enjoy it? There was a lot about this that I found intriguing, but the ending ultimately let me down.