I have always enjoyed reading Louise Erdrich and when I saw she had a dystopia quasi-scifi novel I thought that might be a good reading experience. So I checked it out from the library and started reading. After fifty pages I started wondering, “Is this intentionally bad?”  Like Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music? She had a contract obligation to write a book and so she gave them this?  After a hundred pages I thought, “Hmmm, could it actually stay this bad the whole way through?”  Like a challenge. Can I maintain the same consistently bad writing for 250 pages?  The answer was yes.

This novel might appeal to a small audience, maybe people who have never read any science fiction, never read any dystopian novels, never read Children of Men, or The Handmaid’s Tale, or The Blind Assassin, never read other Louise Erdrich novels (her long short story Shamengwa is awesome in my memory- so don’t tell me it isn’t!).

NPR review agrees with me, LA Times reviewer thinks the book is great.