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Vox by Christina Dalcher

Moral of the story: Women should blame religious conservatives for their problems.

Before I start ranting about everything wrong with this book, I just want to take a moment to mention it’s 1 redeeming quality: it’s a quick read.

And now...

While Dread Nation was cashing in on social relevance, and Children of Blood and Bone was riding the success of Black Panther (although the hype surrounding it kind of hid that fact). Vox one-ups them by doing both at the same time. Capitalizing on feminism, and unashamedly riding the success of The Handmaid’s Tale.

When I explained the premise of Vox to a coworker of mine, even she said: “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”
Yep, a girl said that. Her exact words.

Women are only allowed to speak 100 words per day, and exceeding that limit results in an electric shock from a mechanical wristband keeping track of said words.
...and that’s about as far as the story concept went. The author knew she wanted to write a story about women being oppressed, which is fine. But seriously? THAT’S what you came up with. This book would’ve been better off going with some Planet of the Apes style nonsense, where the protagonist finds herself in a new land where women aren’t just oppressed, but are full on enslaved. If anything it would’ve been more exciting.

And yet somehow, the basic premise of the story isn’t even its biggest flaw.

The world building in this is unbelievable, and not in the good way. I mean it’s literally NOT believable. Even ignoring the absurdity that our society would allow such a drastic change in civil rights given our current real world views, it’s world building at its absolute worst. And for those of you who are saying “but it’s not our world, it’s a dystopian society,” keep reading.

The first half of this book is littered with pop culture references, from FIOS to the iPhone, from South Park to Pokémon Go. It even throws in real life historical events such as the Nazis and Rwanda. Having all of these real world inclusions only breaks down the illusion of a dystopian society. I think it’s fair to say that if women’s speech we’re limited to such an extreme, we wouldn’t have a lot of the things we enjoy today and history would’ve played out a lot differently.

It’s almost like, instead of actually taking the time to world build, the author just decided to take our real world and give it a new reality. Except her new reality doesn’t make sense within the world she’s trying to fit it into. (I think that made sense).

Also, a side-note that was just kind of bugging me: If the church, and/or a religious faction, were able to amass so much power as to be able to remove the constitutional rights of women, I’m pretty sure, of all things, South Park probably wouldn’t be around anymore.

Given the timeframe this book is coming out, I don’t doubt it will be a success. But I do believe it will be for the wrong reasons.