Reviews with content warning for Transphobia - The Free People's Village

TL;DR: The opposite of a white saviour book.

This is an electric, nuanced book about revolutions, intersectionality, and fighting the good fight. I was initially side-eyeing the choice to make the POV character a cis white girl but this works out really well as an audience surrogate for learning and growing as a character as she interacts and falls in love with this group of people trying to make the world a better place.

It feels almost incidental to have the setting be an alt-history world where Al Gore wins the election in 2000 and launches a war on climate change. The result is depressingly similar: the prison complex to incarcerate people of colour and profit from their labour, the carbon tax loopholes used by the wealthy white people to make more money, the gentrifications of run-down neighbourhoods so that the residents are priced out and then the affluent take over the trendy new area. It's all depressingly similar to the world we face today.

Maddie is such an interesting and deeply flawed character. She is cognizant of her privilege and the fact that she is risking less than others by simply being white, cis and female in a protest alongside people of colour and various queer presentations. She's likeable despite (or perhaps because of?) having relatable flaws such as guilt for profiting from a system that the people she loves are trapped by, railing in her own small ways against the injustice of the system, and trying to take that one step to support her comrades. Her journey from feeling selfish to contributing to the fight is engaging and relatable.

The cast of characters around her are fiery, engaging, and knowledgeable, and also sometimes assholes. I appreciate the nuance. This is not your historical text about people being larger than life, but a story about a collection of humans who are tired, beaten down and worn out by the world they exist in, but continue to fight to make it better.

If you're ever tired and worn down by the good fight in whatever way you contribute to it, this book will make you laugh, deeply sad, invigorated, and eventually hopeful.

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parkerela's review

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3.75

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kleinekita's review against another edition

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challenging hopeful inspiring medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.0

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catsteaandabook's review

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reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

It was cool to read such a brazenly leftist book, though it did kind of read as “this is what leftism is” at times which was just not what I wanted. I can understand its value though. The prose also was not my favorite, though it wasn’t bad.

Also, this is a very small portion of the book, but I kind of didn’t appreciate how Christianity was portrayed, like I believe we can understand and condemn all of the terror that has been inflicted using Christianity as a front and all the oppression still perpetrated by Christian leaders and organizations, while also recognizing that they do not define the religion as a whole. The book basically calls Christianity inherently evil, using European Christian conquests and white Christian nationalism as reasoning, which I just think is belittling to progressive and non-European Christians. (Christianity literally started in Palestine.) Also not all preachers are rich? Like? Most aren’t?

Anyway, I appreciated a lot of what this book had to say. I loved the concept and I think it did an excellent job showing how democrats won’t save us. I also appreciated seeing different opinions within leftism. And neopronoun rep! I loved its portrayal of white guilt and how, while it’s well meaning, it frequently ends up hurting people of color. Liberal white guilt runs deep and I’m still in the process of unlearning it. It’s admittedly only recently that I learned about the harm it can cause.

This book wasn’t perfect, and honestly I think part of my feelings are just it not really being my style, but I still am glad I read it and I would like to read more from Sim Kern.

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blue_txt's review against another edition

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slow-paced

2.0

There's a review on here, by Kendra, in which they suggest that Sim Kern's characters were ideas. I think that's spot on. This book is a hard read - the first 1/3 alternates between expositions of Maddie Ryan's backstory (with toxic relationships reminiscent of Colleen Hoover characters) and didactic dialogue. Every conversation is pedantic lecture from a different character representing some concept to teach Maddie, who I guess is supposed to represent the "reader", a white Christian cis woman.
I've never wanted to experience fictional leftist in-fighting.

I don't enjoy books with thought-experiment based plots, so I knew it wasn't going to be a great read for me. I guess I expected more from the characters since the plot was so paper-thin.

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bobbi's review against another edition

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challenging reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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