Seen through the eyes of a main character who can't remember anything from life before the prison, you get to explore this strange, grim world from first principles. Its an alien way to explore an alien place, and the mystery just keeps getting deeper all the way through. The ending makes this a stylistically divisive book - you're gonna love it or you're gonna hate it.

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As always, no spoilers until the end when we get into the full plot explanation and discussion.

Similar books we recommend:

The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Book of the Unnamed Midwife by Meg Elison

This episode is sponsored by Mindstock by Richard Yonk, available here.

If you want to jump around, here are the timestamps for the episode:

00:00 Intro
01:00 Book setup
01:45 Sponsor - Mindstock by Richard Yonck
2:17 Our review 4/5
3:50 Must be dystopia, journal time
5:00 Environmental storytelling
8:21 Hyper rational main character?
11:29 Harpman's family in the holocaust
17:15 Shadow of the Colossus
18:15 The Buried Giant
19:02 The Handmaid's Tale
19:46 Book of the Unnamed Midwife
20:54 Spoilers section - book summary
22:44 Spoilers section - discussion