Plot Summary
In a dystopian future all males have become infertile and the extinction of mankind is forthcoming. No children have been born for 25 years. The United Kingdom is ruled by the Warden of England through totalitarian means disguised as egalitarianism. Theo, the Warden's cousin, is approached by a group of revolutionaries seeking change.
Review
The book is divided into two parts and within those parts are plain narrative chapters and Theo's journal entry chapters that are told through his first person perspective. In the first part of the book most of his journal entries reminisce about the past, mainly for character development. I found the first half of the book very long and drawn out. It's over half the book and not much really happens at all. In all honestly you could skip all the journal entry chapters of the first half of the book and just read the narrative. I found myself patiently waiting for something to happen or for Theo to get to the point of his journal entries but it seemed to take forever. The opening entry sets up the backstory of how the society is run. Other than that he just goes on about his childhood relationship with this cousin (the Warden) and his failed marriage. I could sum up the actual events happening in the first half of the book in a few sentences. Also, I found the main character to be a pompous ass. He thinks very highly of his own intelligence and is very condescending to everyone he speaks to. He thinks he's better and smarter than everyone else which I found annoying. It doesn't really make for a very likable protagonist. The second half of the book is much more interesting as things are actually starting to happen but it lacks character development for all the members of the resistance group. Overall I'd say it's drawn out but still a good read. Though parts of it are kind of annoying and there's one part I found absurdly ridiculous.
Spoiler Review
The first part of the book can be summed up very quickly. Theo is approached by a group of rebels that want him to meet with his cousin, The Warden of England, and try to convince him to forgo some of the extreme totalitarian measures that are oppressing people. He hears a story from one of the rebels about how her brother escaped the island penal colony only to be tracked down and murdered. He witnesses a government mandated euthanization of the elderly that more closely resembles murder. He meets with his cousin and asks that he reconsider these practices. His cousin says no. Then he randomly decides to skip town for several months.
Him leaving town seems just random and bizarre. He's obsessing over Julian, the main female revolutionary even though he only met her three times. He's so worried about her dying the last time he sees her he promises that if she sends for him, he'll be there. And then randomly decides to leave the country and travel over Europe. Which is the complete opposite of what he promised her. Conveniently she decides to send for him months later right when he gets back from his trip. It's so odd. I feel like the trip part should have been left out of the book entirely. The author doesn't go into the detail of it. The book just skips ahead to him being back but it's too convenient and random a break in the story. I know they needed a passage a time because Julian gets pregnant and she needs to be visually showing a baby bump when he sees her again but why leave town? Why not just have him report on what he reads in the paper that their group is up to (bombings, publishing materials about their revolution, etc.) and sit around thinking of Julian and worrying about her safety. I think that's a little more believable. Plus, they basically say the rebels did next to nothing the whole time he was gone besides blow up a few docks so the elderly can't be euthanized at sea. If they're so wanted by the state, shouldn't they be more of a threat than that?
There are a few things that happen that I just don't buy at all. He claims that most people have abandoned religion but I think if something like this happened it would have the complete opposite effect. I think everyone would flock to religion. How else would anyone explain mass infertility? It would have to have been from some divine intervention. Maybe the coming of the rapture? I'm not exactly sure what the author was trying to say about religion but it clearly plays a significant role in the book considering that the only woman to get pregnant in 25 years is religious, claiming that she joined the group because it's God's will she do so and that the father of her child is a priest. However, both she and the father of her child sinned in order to conceive since she was married to someone else and having an affair but loved neither man. Theo finds religion absurd and ridiculous and spends a great deal of time reminding everyone of his opinion on it in a very condescending way, including her even though he's supposedly in love with her.
Theo starts obsessing over Julian for no apparent reason. He convinces himself that he's in love with her, maybe because she's the only other woman besides his ex-wife that he's interacted with in years. It doesn't make much sense considering she has no real character development at all. Besides the fact that she's religious, there's nothing really to her character besides being the female that drives the story because she gets pregnant. She's doesn't seem very intelligent at all, nor very compassionate.
The second half of the book has them on the run with Theo trying to protect Julian and find some place secluded and safe for her to have her baby while getting supplies. It's definitely more exciting than the first half of the book. Julian sends for Theo. He finds out she's pregnant and they go on the run looking for a safe place for her to give birth. On the drive they get attacked by the most absurd sounding gang I've ever read about. It's so ridiculous it's almost comical. They lose their car and supplies and the father of Julian's baby is murdered. Her husband finds out and betrays them to the Warden. Theo gets another car and meager supplies. On the run again they find a small shed in the woods for Julian to give birth. Theo faces off against the Warden to keep Julian's baby out of his hands. Victorious, he claims himself the new Warden and the book ends.
I like the second half of the book. It's pretty exciting but the whole gang robbing them just pulls me out of it. Apparently a gang of nearly naked youths with painted faces terrorize them while they're in their car. Then for some reason they dance around once they're out of the car and decided to murder one person in the group with their bats to prove dominance. Once they murder him, they take the car away to set it on fire and never return to finish the rest of them off or see what happened to them ever again. This just sounds so weird. My suspension of disbelief doesn't go far enough for me to even envision this scene in my head. How and why are they dancing around practically naked? Why would they steal a car of useful supplies just to burn it? Why terrorize people driving on the road for no real reason? Why leave them there to fend for themselves and not finish the rest of them off? The group escape the gang by running a few feet and jumping over a wall but that's pretty much it. They don't run very far from the ambush site in the dark and without a car they wouldn't get very far anyway. I'd be worried and on edge the entire time thinking they'd come back and finish them all off but the gang is never mentioned again. They even go back for the body so they can bury it and the gang just leaves conveniently so they can get it. It probably would have been better if there was just a normal robber on the road that needed a car and stole it at gunpoint. I mean, they needed to lose the car with supplies but doing it in this ridiculous manner makes no sense.
I can also see where The Walking Dead took inspiration for Negan and his stupid bat from. The painted faces gang is basically the same thing. Setting up a trap in the road. Threatening the group with bats that have their previous victims hair wrapped around it (instead of barb wire) and then killing one person in the group to establish dominance.
The only other thing I found odd was that cloning was never touched
upon. The subject never even came up. It was established that the
males are the ones that are infertile but cloning doesn't require
sperm. If something like this ever happened it'd be a guarantee that
cloning would be done en masse. I'm sure human cloning is being
done secretly by various governments now. Even when I was
in middle school the news reported on how a sheep was successfully
cloned so that would definitely be a possibility. Maybe the book should
have claimed that everyone was infertile, not just the males.
I liked how the book touched upon how crazy people
would become if they couldn't have children. Where women were pushing
dolls around in strollers pretending they were children and
people were christening pets instead of babies. It was very eerie and I
liked how it set the tone for what society had become.
I also liked but was equally horrified by the idea of what the Warden planned to use the baby for. To repopulate the Earth if it was a boy by breeding it like an animal. The way he described using his sperm once he came of age (13 years old) was disturbing. He mentioned that the youngest females would be 38 by then which added all kinds of child molestation and rape implications that disturbed me to think about. But the book addresses several times what they would plan to do if viable sperm was found. Pretty gross actually but believable in a desperate society. When Julian's husband thinks his seed is fertile he practically regards himself as a God and enjoys the power that would come with it. The Warden obviously wants to claim the power for himself by claiming ownership of the baby and presenting it to the world. Theo only cares for Julian and keeping her baby safe which redeems his self-important pompous attitude and made me kind of like him toward the end.
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