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ntembeast's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
This book is an absolute masterpiece collection of sci-fi short stories set in the Dirty Computer universe, first created by Janelle Monae via her music/videos. It's diverse, filled with complex, wonderfully frustrating and authentic characters, and a world of such fascinating parallel and potential to our own. It feels like it's one shadow away from the world we currently live in, in the best kind of way. A sci-fi that cautions and reflects, like a mirror, all the worst and best parts of us right now through the lens of a beautifully black femme and nonbinary, queer perspective. Such a delightful, fascinating, in depth, and wholly immersive experience. An absolute immediate recommendation for everyone to buy. It's incredible. Simply wonderful!
The Memory Librarian
This introduction did a fantastic job of setting up the world for us to settle into. Incredible imagery, fantastic twists, unreliable main characters, side characters, and a nuanced depth to decisions made by everyone we read about. No one is perfect. No one is exactly what they seem. But they're also never 100% good or 100% bad. And that's the beauty of this world that gets set up for us here: the stark understanding that this world is not what it pretends to be, not what it seems to be even when you think we're taking off the mask and seeing it for its true self, because sometimes not even the characters we're reading about want to be their true selves. Sometimes, everything they do and feel is so authentic, while also being so much more complex than just good or bad, right and wrong. It's a brilliant, painful, complicated beginning, with a touch of hope, a promise of potential, that--now that I've finished this book--is a trademark of this entire collection of stories, and of this world that Janelle Monae and their collaborators have created. Stunning, unforgettable; and not just inspiring: consuming, like a conflagration, like the all-encompassing flames of a phoenix being reborn. And that's what makes it so very, very worthwhile.
Nevermind
I love everything about this story. A look outside of the streets we became familiar with in the first story. This is where you begin to understand that every tale is an entirely separate, and yet beautifully fully fleshed out concept that integrates seamlessly with the rest of this world. I love the emphasis on a community as it should be: welcoming of all individuals regardless of the way that they choose to represent themselves to the world, whether by gender, by polyamory, by fluidity. It shows how fear and pain can rip apart the strongest of communities if we let it, but also shows how if we stand together, with love and respect, with understanding, and a heart and mind ready and willing to listen and learn, that we can overcome even the treacherous holes boring poison inside us. In a world that still fights about these things, I'm so happy that we had an anti-TERF message that focused on a mix of passion and respect for the natural healing we can all find, no matter how much our circumstances have harmed us.
Timebox
I've never been so simultaneously seen and called out by just about anything in the world. Our main character in this story is experiencing a tale as old as time in this capitalistic hellscape we currently reside in, mirrored in this world we see here. It's probably the story that's the closest to our current world, and perhaps that's why I was so violently in tune with the exhaustion it conveyed. The burnout, the always being a million steps ahead, planning down to the last second to fit a hundred-thousand different things into a day when you've had no rest, no help, no chance at a break for ever in your foreseeable future for not just hours, not just days, not just weeks, not just months, not just years, but for a lifetime, a lifetime of never ever ever being able to stop, to rest, to catch up-- to just keep pushing through, barely, barely, consumed by the balancing that never stops... only for the people you trusted most in your life to turn around and betray you. Oof... even seeing the signs from the very first page didn't prepare me for the heartbreak of this story. It's so gut-wrenchingly painful, and probably the only story of all five in this book that really left on this desperately terrible, horrible, sad ending. And yet, such a necessary one. A necessary one, to truly convey to those who do not understand what it is that some people go through, what their every single instance of consciousness is like, and how mistreated, how desperately hopeful and burnt out and fragile those perpetually burning candles of some people are. It's a wailing, a dirge for the suffering constantly going on around us, and I loved this story so much for it. For showing an existence that hurts, but that is so, so relevant to so many.
Save Changes
This story is so simple, but really had me bouncing all over the place with my feelings (in a good way). It had me suspicious as hell at the beginning when we met the main character's mother, because *squints* but the commitment really did present a horrifying possibility, one that isn't unrealistic to conceive, considering the type of technological advances in this world, especially harkening back to the first story of this collection, The Memory Librarian, and the evidence of damage that can happen to individuals taken by New Dawn. But this story is another one that excels at misleading you, because I started off being on the main character's side entirely against their sister, only to flip my thoughts entirely, until I was finding myself siding with her sister and defending her entirely. It's such a lovely portrayal of the fact that sometimes your siblings are actually so much more than you perceive them as, and I love that the tale was able to eventually get them to understand and respect one another. Though I will say, the low-key anxiety about our main character using her father's gift at the wrong time made me be like, "You had me in the first half, not gonna lie!" because I thought for SURE she was going to fuck it up. The fact that things played out the way they did... I was ready to shake our main character so badly at the end. Kudos, big kudos on leading me on the way you did. And also, love the further exploration of natural entities and powers in the world being utilized outside just our advanced technology. A sweet, if sometimes exasperating story.
Timebox Altar(ed)
The best way I can describe this short story is to say that it's as if the city of Midgar from Final Fantasy VII was mixed with The Animatrix's episode Beyond, the Witches from A Wrinkle in Time, and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe from The Chronicles of Narnia, and I mean that in the BEST kind of way. This was such a fun and hopeful, healing story after some of the brutally real threat and despair in the stories that came before it, and I think the author couldn't have ended the book on a better note. It was beautiful and fun and whimsical and made my heart fill with love and fire, with passion and determination. This is what we fight for. This is what we need to remember when we step out into the world. When we are given the chance to choose silence and obedience, or to speak out and create something better. We have the chance every single day, every single moment, to be better. And this book really did fill me with that. What a fantastic way to end. This book is going straight into my shopping cart, because I absolutely need it in my library, right now. And everyone, everyone, should read it.
The Memory Librarian
This introduction did a fantastic job of setting up the world for us to settle into. Incredible imagery, fantastic twists, unreliable main characters, side characters, and a nuanced depth to decisions made by everyone we read about. No one is perfect. No one is exactly what they seem. But they're also never 100% good or 100% bad. And that's the beauty of this world that gets set up for us here: the stark understanding that this world is not what it pretends to be, not what it seems to be even when you think we're taking off the mask and seeing it for its true self, because sometimes not even the characters we're reading about want to be their true selves. Sometimes, everything they do and feel is so authentic, while also being so much more complex than just good or bad, right and wrong. It's a brilliant, painful, complicated beginning, with a touch of hope, a promise of potential, that--now that I've finished this book--is a trademark of this entire collection of stories, and of this world that Janelle Monae and their collaborators have created. Stunning, unforgettable; and not just inspiring: consuming, like a conflagration, like the all-encompassing flames of a phoenix being reborn. And that's what makes it so very, very worthwhile.
Nevermind
I love everything about this story. A look outside of the streets we became familiar with in the first story. This is where you begin to understand that every tale is an entirely separate, and yet beautifully fully fleshed out concept that integrates seamlessly with the rest of this world. I love the emphasis on a community as it should be: welcoming of all individuals regardless of the way that they choose to represent themselves to the world, whether by gender, by polyamory, by fluidity. It shows how fear and pain can rip apart the strongest of communities if we let it, but also shows how if we stand together, with love and respect, with understanding, and a heart and mind ready and willing to listen and learn, that we can overcome even the treacherous holes boring poison inside us. In a world that still fights about these things, I'm so happy that we had an anti-TERF message that focused on a mix of passion and respect for the natural healing we can all find, no matter how much our circumstances have harmed us.
Timebox
I've never been so simultaneously seen and called out by just about anything in the world. Our main character in this story is experiencing a tale as old as time in this capitalistic hellscape we currently reside in, mirrored in this world we see here. It's probably the story that's the closest to our current world, and perhaps that's why I was so violently in tune with the exhaustion it conveyed. The burnout, the always being a million steps ahead, planning down to the last second to fit a hundred-thousand different things into a day when you've had no rest, no help, no chance at a break for ever in your foreseeable future for not just hours, not just days, not just weeks, not just months, not just years, but for a lifetime, a lifetime of never ever ever being able to stop, to rest, to catch up-- to just keep pushing through, barely, barely, consumed by the balancing that never stops... only for the people you trusted most in your life to turn around and betray you. Oof... even seeing the signs from the very first page didn't prepare me for the heartbreak of this story. It's so gut-wrenchingly painful, and probably the only story of all five in this book that really left on this desperately terrible, horrible, sad ending. And yet, such a necessary one. A necessary one, to truly convey to those who do not understand what it is that some people go through, what their every single instance of consciousness is like, and how mistreated, how desperately hopeful and burnt out and fragile those perpetually burning candles of some people are. It's a wailing, a dirge for the suffering constantly going on around us, and I loved this story so much for it. For showing an existence that hurts, but that is so, so relevant to so many.
Save Changes
This story is so simple, but really had me bouncing all over the place with my feelings (in a good way). It had me suspicious as hell at the beginning when we met the main character's mother, because *squints* but the commitment really did present a horrifying possibility, one that isn't unrealistic to conceive, considering the type of technological advances in this world, especially harkening back to the first story of this collection, The Memory Librarian, and the evidence of damage that can happen to individuals taken by New Dawn. But this story is another one that excels at misleading you, because I started off being on the main character's side entirely against their sister, only to flip my thoughts entirely, until I was finding myself siding with her sister and defending her entirely. It's such a lovely portrayal of the fact that sometimes your siblings are actually so much more than you perceive them as, and I love that the tale was able to eventually get them to understand and respect one another. Though I will say, the low-key anxiety about our main character using her father's gift at the wrong time made me be like, "You had me in the first half, not gonna lie!" because I thought for SURE she was going to fuck it up. The fact that things played out the way they did... I was ready to shake our main character so badly at the end. Kudos, big kudos on leading me on the way you did. And also, love the further exploration of natural entities and powers in the world being utilized outside just our advanced technology. A sweet, if sometimes exasperating story.
Timebox Altar(ed)
The best way I can describe this short story is to say that it's as if the city of Midgar from Final Fantasy VII was mixed with The Animatrix's episode Beyond, the Witches from A Wrinkle in Time, and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe from The Chronicles of Narnia, and I mean that in the BEST kind of way. This was such a fun and hopeful, healing story after some of the brutally real threat and despair in the stories that came before it, and I think the author couldn't have ended the book on a better note. It was beautiful and fun and whimsical and made my heart fill with love and fire, with passion and determination. This is what we fight for. This is what we need to remember when we step out into the world. When we are given the chance to choose silence and obedience, or to speak out and create something better. We have the chance every single day, every single moment, to be better. And this book really did fill me with that. What a fantastic way to end. This book is going straight into my shopping cart, because I absolutely need it in my library, right now. And everyone, everyone, should read it.
rainmisoa's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
tense
fast-paced
5.0
Wow... just wow... this book is incredible! I loved everything about it. The writing, the story, the characters, the diversity, the creativity, all of it. I've always loved Monae's work. Her music is always so deep in its meaning, in what she is trying to say. So I've wanted to read her book the moment I first saw her Dirty Computer short film. I loved that she wrote a book that expanded the universe she created in that movie.
Each short story was told exceptionally well. You can feel the horror that many of these characters had to face because of how strict and controlling everything was. But there was always a sense of hope wrapped into these stories. A message of if you are willing to fight back, you can get through anything. I loved that even though there was a lot of strife, Monae found a way to bring love into this bleak world. It really does give you a sense of empowerment, that one day we may be able to live in a world where there isn't any discrimination of any kind.
I do have one minor complaint about the audiobook, however. I listened to the audiobook as I read along with the physical book and I noticed some discrepancies. Especially in the second story in the collection. The story centers around a character that uses they/them pronouns and as such, in the physical book, the writing included a lot of gender neutral terms to refer to people. Like saying group or occupants to refer to people. However, the audiobook would replace those words with women making it appear as if everyone in attendance were identifying themselves as women and that's not the case. It's also very troubling that the audiobook kept saying "women" seeing as how the whole point of the story is to call out TERFs. It was just disheartening to hear the audiobook read in that way. Not to mention that the audiobook I was listening to claimed that it was the "unabridged" version yet there were sections of the physical book that were skipped over in the audiobook. If I wasn't reading the physical book along with listening to the audiobook, I would not have been aware to the nuances of the story. Some people do not have the privilege to read the physical book and can only rely on the audiobook which means they will miss out on parts of the story. I am just disappointed that the audiobook had such discrepancies in it.
Other than the audiobook, the physical book is incredibly well done. As I said earlier, I have no complaints about this book. Each short story is unique and fits this world Monae created so well. I am looking forward to any other books Monae may write in the future. If you love sci-fi, dystopian worlds, queer love, hope for the future, then read this book! You will have such a great time! Might want to skip on the audiobook, though.
Each short story was told exceptionally well. You can feel the horror that many of these characters had to face because of how strict and controlling everything was. But there was always a sense of hope wrapped into these stories. A message of if you are willing to fight back, you can get through anything. I loved that even though there was a lot of strife, Monae found a way to bring love into this bleak world. It really does give you a sense of empowerment, that one day we may be able to live in a world where there isn't any discrimination of any kind.
I do have one minor complaint about the audiobook, however. I listened to the audiobook as I read along with the physical book and I noticed some discrepancies. Especially in the second story in the collection. The story centers around a character that uses they/them pronouns and as such, in the physical book, the writing included a lot of gender neutral terms to refer to people. Like saying group or occupants to refer to people. However, the audiobook would replace those words with women making it appear as if everyone in attendance were identifying themselves as women and that's not the case. It's also very troubling that the audiobook kept saying "women" seeing as how the whole point of the story is to call out TERFs. It was just disheartening to hear the audiobook read in that way. Not to mention that the audiobook I was listening to claimed that it was the "unabridged" version yet there were sections of the physical book that were skipped over in the audiobook. If I wasn't reading the physical book along with listening to the audiobook, I would not have been aware to the nuances of the story. Some people do not have the privilege to read the physical book and can only rely on the audiobook which means they will miss out on parts of the story. I am just disappointed that the audiobook had such discrepancies in it.
Other than the audiobook, the physical book is incredibly well done. As I said earlier, I have no complaints about this book. Each short story is unique and fits this world Monae created so well. I am looking forward to any other books Monae may write in the future. If you love sci-fi, dystopian worlds, queer love, hope for the future, then read this book! You will have such a great time! Might want to skip on the audiobook, though.
surperb's review against another edition
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
disabledbookdragon's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
mj_james_writes's review against another edition
Maybe because I know nothing of the music I didn’t feel the need to continue. The world building and character development isn’t great, and for what was being told it really needed to be.
year23's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
The biggest flaw in these stories is that they are confusing - it feels like this is the author(s) (I'm referencing both Janelle Monae, as well as the collaborators) first time writing something that requires significant world building in addition to story, plot, characters, etc. All of the stories are running on vibes, feels, but missing connective tissues that help create a fully realized world & characters.
It took me so long to read this one, I kept picking it up, putting back down again. It reads like YA, which tends to be very hit or miss for me - I think if I had known that going in, I wouldn't have picked it up. That's not a knock on the writing, just not my jam so to speak.
What is a knock though is the world building - plot threads - character development - it's too sparse in all categories, leaving to a lot of holes that as a reader, I don't think we should need to fill in.
I've been reading a lot of Octavia Butler lately and her writing has sort of set the bar for me in terms of worldbuilding in a sci-fi or dystopian setting. Not that these books are trying to be in conversation with each other, but there are a lot of similar themes and I think Butler's work really is a trailblazer for this kind of collection. Basically - I think there's something here in this collection that's really powerful/resonant in themes around oppression, particularly against queer + trans BIPOC people. But it's almost like the stories were built to try and fit around the lyrics of the album, and as a result, there's gaps that I think take you out of the story.
It took me so long to read this one, I kept picking it up, putting back down again. It reads like YA, which tends to be very hit or miss for me - I think if I had known that going in, I wouldn't have picked it up. That's not a knock on the writing, just not my jam so to speak.
What is a knock though is the world building - plot threads - character development - it's too sparse in all categories, leaving to a lot of holes that as a reader, I don't think we should need to fill in.
I've been reading a lot of Octavia Butler lately and her writing has sort of set the bar for me in terms of worldbuilding in a sci-fi or dystopian setting. Not that these books are trying to be in conversation with each other, but there are a lot of similar themes and I think Butler's work really is a trailblazer for this kind of collection. Basically - I think there's something here in this collection that's really powerful/resonant in themes around oppression, particularly against queer + trans BIPOC people. But it's almost like the stories were built to try and fit around the lyrics of the album, and as a result, there's gaps that I think take you out of the story.
bookdragonkatie's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
mavemarie's review against another edition
hopeful
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0