I don’t normally do book reviews. There was a time when it felt somewhat empowering to express my detailed opinion on a story, but I’ve found that rating systems tend to be so warped from person to person (with me skewing more on the positive side) that it starts to feel pointless to develop metrics. I like reading books. It doesn’t get more complicated than that, except for that I listen to them now as well. And oddly enough, this is just with books. With shows and movies, I have a much easier time explaining how and why something wasn’t up to par, but for some reason books are different. Is it the medium? Is it because I studied literature and not film? Do I get something more out of books in a way that bad shows and movies can feel more like wasted time? I really couldn’t say. All I know is that about a month ago, I began listening on audiobook to a very good story. It was only published in 2019, yet I can’t figure out where exactly I came across it. Something recommended by an algorithm most likely. Regardless, I really liked it, and the story it told felt important. I was buying a couple other books related to the class I’m taking on Utopian and Dystopian literature, and thought, “well, this is a dystopian book. Could possibly make a good paper topic.” It hadn’t yet come out on paperback yet, but there were some cheap used versions of the hardcover for sale, and since the hardcovers I buy are usually 50+ years old, I thought I’d treat myself. Last week, it arrived, and it was more than a hardback. It was a library book. Now, there are a lot of reasons why libraries get rid of their books, and I’m not about to even have you presume I actually know anything about the ins and outs of that process – but it does seem unusual that a library would give up an undamaged, unmarked book that only came out a year ago. Perhaps the pandemic has something to do it, or the wildfires, considering it looks like it came from a county in the Bay Area. Either way, I wanted to talk a bit about Rob Hart’s The Warehouse. However I may have come across it, whatever short description it gave was enough to entice me. I don’t believe it was the description actually given on the back of the book or the Amazon page. It only deepens my curiosity as to where I might’ve come across this book, but if you’d like a fair rundown of what the book is about (without giving too much away), I’d actually recommend checking out Gabino Iglesias’ review. But the short of it is this -- the book essentially imagines a world where an Amazon-like company (called The Cloud, but it’s basically Amazon without being Amazon) continues developing and reaches its logical conclusion: a complete monopoly on anything and everything, including jobs. I don’t want to get into the nitty gritty of how that works in this universe, since I think part of the books charm is its fair ability to balance between nuance and starkness in its messaging, which is helped by its 3 perspectives. You have Paxton, who’s kind of a everyman character who has had to suck up his pride to work for Cloud after his start-up company went under. He constantly wants to do right, but seems to constantly find himself in systems that encourage and reward him for working against his own morals. His wants to eventually leave to start up a new company, but quickly starts to doubt how possible this is. You have Zinnea, who you very quickly find out is a corporate spy sent undercover by an unknown employer (not going to say who since it apparently wasn’t obvious to a lot of Goodreads reviewers) to find out the source of Cloud’s power. She’s kind of everything one generally likes in spy characters: smart, resourceful, dishes out punches – a very independent character all around. And then you occasionally hear from Gibson, the found of Cloud, in the form of polished blog posts he’s writing as he announces to the world that he’s dying (it’s the first line, so, not much of a spoiler). It sometimes feels random to have him jumping in throughout the story, suddenly addressing you by speaking in the 1st person. But his view is central to presenting the themes of the book, and the stark difference between rhetoric (along with the narratives we tell) and reality. It’s all around a well thought out story that had me on the end of my seat in the last quarter as Zinnea finally gets to the bottom of her mission (there’s a Soylent Green-esque bluff that I admittedly didn’t know what to do with, but was undoubtedly hilarious). But the reason why I really recommend the book is this: there are a lot of people drawing candidates for what dystopian novel is “representative” of our current (American) society. Everyone wants to call out 1984 (which makes me think no one has actually read Brave New World); but if it weren’t for the pandemic, I would say it’s this. The Warehouse. Maybe it is even with the pandemic, as Amazon took on more of the role usually provided by stores. Regardless, I’m getting the sense that the book didn’t get the fair chance it might have deserved. It may not be everyone’s cake, but I think this is one to give a shot. It’s not long. It’s not difficult to read. And it feels important.
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R. E. DrewAmateur Author
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