sathinfection

I'm trying to get back into the habit of posting book reviews, even though they're very half-assed. I read a fair variety of things, so chances are I'll eventually hit someone's interest. This one is ported over from Tumblr.

The Slynx is about post-apocalyptic Russia, written about two hundred years or so after the calamity. It was really interesting and creative, although it really suffered from me disliking he POV character. Benedict is an unlikable ass, and I honestly don’t care about his Big Book Feelings because he’s an asshole. This is in fact a major sticking point for me when it comes to books: the main character doesn’t need to be a good person, but I have to like/enjoy them somehow. Benedict was just someone whom I felt was getting in the way of the worldbuilding.

As for the worldbuilding, Tolstaya does a great job at playing up the mutant trope and the theme of rebuilding from nothing. Something she did that was particularly good was she had survivors from the time of the Blast who were basically immortal, but she didn’t use one for the POV - which I think was ultimately a good decision, because it meant Benedict was a naive narrator, but also a problem because I couldn’t stand the guy.

Tolstaya wrote a great mix of the familiar and the uncanny - a good example is how the cats in The Slynx still chase mice, but they have little human hands (kinda adorable IMO). Mice, by the way, form the basic economic unit of the post-apocalyptic society.

Highly recommend this to fans of post-apocalyptic lit if you can withstand a punchable narrator.