WARNING: Adult Content
I found this such a difficult book to read, but not in a bad way. There were several blank pages at the beginning and the Thee’s and thou’s throughout this book gave me pause. Yet this tale is set in a bizarrely sexual-religious world and these modes of speech add flavour.
The novel is set in a cylindrical space settlement where people wear atmohelms, a translucent facial membrane a mere inch from their face to protect them in case of their dome’s depressurisation. In this settlement, just about everything is hochmut, against God’s will. This includes vanity, sexual perversions, air conditioners, indulgences such as subscriptions for Lustbots – most especially spending time in a place that is not a real place. That said, there’s a focus on sexual pleasures. Jynabare (as in the title of the book) is herself physically satisfied by a fornibot to the point where she’s killed – before being bought back to life via her subscriber resurrection contact, to be killed time and again.
In this vision of the far future a cosmedifier sculpts those going through reclonification, even down to matching clothing to body modification and the following life is a drug-induced fuckfest – which is the only real way to explain it. You can tailor your new body by gender, colour, or build – even with modified sexual organs.
As mentioned, I didn’t find this an easy read, but I did find it both inspiring and fascinating. All in all, this is a well-written work that reminded me somewhat of Sean Connery’s wonderful Zardoz – with an emphasis on snuff movies and pleasurecide – all set in a bizarre and wondrous future.
Some will love this book, others will take a peek and put it down. But when all’s said and done I admire this work immensely – it has a lot going for it.
