Last time, Connor 2: Connor, but nicer, mixed race, adopted, and willing to fight back to protect himself and others, so evil incarnate.
Miracolina is Lev 2 and like Connor 2, better engages the basic premise and world, but like Connor 2, the world is still Unwind and it’s all still terrible. She’s a happy tithe.
Last time, Miracolina’s chapter was so incredibly long and terrible I split it into two. Today, the other terrible half.
Our third character. If Miracolina was Lev 2: Actually Resembling A Character This Time, Cam is to this book as Lev was to the last one, a character who’s unusual and there to show something about the setting, as well as to be very wrong about whatever part he’s highlighting. (more…)
Well, our three new characters introduced, we reach Part 2: Whollies
Then we do the thing where the writer puts in some actual news that either inspired him or just fits with the thing he wants to hammer in, and it’s the thing about how a state’s law about abandoning babies at hospitals made some people drop off older kids, haha parents suck right?
Well, no. (more…)
And now, Connor. Fucking Connor.
The best part of these missions is the look on the parents’ faces when they realize that the tables have been turned. How their eyes dart down toward the tranq gun aimed at them, suddenly realizing that their unwind order is now nothing but a piece of paper.
And we see how we have now officially left any hope of decent characterization behind. It is Connor. They are adults. (more…)
There is only one permanently disabled resident of the Graveyard. Since the disabled are a protected class, they’re never at risk for being unwound, so they never turn up at the Graveyard with all the other kids who ran from their unwind order. It’s a testimony to the swiss-cheese nature of public compassion.
It’s also just random plot fiat. (more…)
A representative from the Anti-Divisional Resistance shows up the next afternoon—three days late for his scheduled meeting with Connor. He’s disheveled, paunchy, and drenched in sweat.
“And it’s not even summer,” Connor says—hoping to make the point that the sweltering Arizona summer is just a few months away. The ADR had better get their act together, or there are going to be a lot of angry AWOLs. That is, the ones who survive the heat.
Or maybe just say that, because people generally like direct statements and not passive-aggressive bullshit. (more…)
I get to go back to published books now! What were we doing – oh.
Right.
Well then.
When we last left our…characters, Connor punched the messenger, whined a lot, and decided Connor 2 doing magic tricks with chicken eggs meant he was the best choice for managing their incredibly limited food supplies.
This chapter, it’s Risa playing piano. She explains she was surprised to find the piano was made by Hyundai and then there’s an honestly pretty pleasant piece of exposition: (more…)
Ah, back to the comparatively tolerable Connor 2, who’s explaining how he cleverly didn’t say he wanted power and just networked like hell and at last, through careful planning, Starkey has inserted himself in the right place at the right time to gain Connor ’s favor without him ever knowing that it was all part of Starkey’s long-term plan. (more…)
We’ve reached the third part of this! There’s seven parts total.
Our opening quote for this section is a list of organ prices showing the disparity between how much it costs to buy the organ and how much you get for selling it.
While there’s a valid issue, the information presented here is presented in a horrible, manipulative way: (more…)
A retired 787 arrives with only fourteen Whollies packed in empty beer barrels in the hold. Connor wonders if someone in the resistance is just getting bored, or if the barrels were really the most inconspicuous way to ship them.
Really. Kids are getting shipped in everything including coffins and yet you think beer barrels are somehow different and a sign they’re just screwing around.
Connor again is all THEY ONLY SENT A FEW KIDS TO THE PLACE THAT’S NO LONGER SAFE AND WHICH IS HAVING TROUBLE FEEDING THE KIDS ALREADY THERE, THIS WORRIES ME WHAT COULD BE GOING ON. (more…)
Back to one of the comparatively better characters. We start with Cam is putting on his special anti-scar medicine.
He can feel the tingling as the engineered microorganisms in the cream do their job.
“Believe it or not, the stuff is actually related to yogurt,” the dermatologist told him. “Except, of course, that it eats scar tissue.” It also costs five thousand dollars a jar, but, as Roberta has told him, money is no object when it comes to Cam.
So it’s apparently flesh-eating bacteria, but unlike normal flesh-eating bacteria, it’s difficult to grow.
Kiana’s a sixteen-year-old who works the infirmary’s night shift, lives for drama, and always blows everything out of proportion. Having been purged from a family of doctors, she has a chip on her shoulder when it comes to proving what a good junior medic she is, so her exaggerations are usually just to make herself look better when she solves the emergency. The fact that Kiana has come to get Risa and isn’t trying to take all the glory herself means the situation must truly be serious.
“A couple of kids were messing with an engine turbine,” Kiana tells her
Risa actually gets something to do! We’re not just hearing about Connor-sue’s manpain, actual plot is coming!!! (more…)
Well, it’s time to find Cam his bride orbiting planet you know what bride actually sounds less awful than the term the book keeps using, we’re going with that. (more…)
Time to dive into the fourth part of this, Leviathan. See, leviathan starts with Lev and we have a character named Lev so…uh….well…okay, the shared letters are about it.
SURGEONS HARVEST ORGANS AFTER EUTHANASIA
by Michael Cook, May 14, 2010, BioEdge web journal
How often is this going on in Belgium and the Netherlands? Bioethics blogger Wesley Smith drew our attention to a conference report by Belgian transplant surgeons about organ procurement after euthanasia. As the doctors from Antwerp University Hospital explained in the 2006 World Transplant Congress (in a section called “economics”), they killed a consenting forty-six-year-old woman with a neurological condition and took her liver, two kidneys, and islets.
In a 2008 report, the doctors explained that three patients had been euthanased between 2005 and 2007. . . .
At the time of writing the article, the doctors were enthusiastic about the potential for organ donation in countries where euthanasia is legal. . . .
The curious thing about this is how little publicity this has received, even though the Belgian doctors published their achievement in the world’s leading journal of transplant surgery. ~ Transplantation, July 15, 2006; Transplantation, July 27, 2008.
Possibly because this is only a big deal to people who always freak out at anything like this, and they’re just a boring broken record on the subject so everyone’s sick of hearing about it.
There’s a wonkiness to the whole story and I wonder if it’s a matter of not really understanding why things are good or bad. (more…)