A review by himalaya
The Sentient by Nadia Afifi

3.75

 there is a Lot packed into this - the start is slow-ish, in the direction I was expecting it to be, then it very quickly goes into a whole lot of directions. Which I actually felt was quite interesting, just maybe a little too fast? In some ways it felt like set-up/context for what the Real focus of the story is gonna be in the next books - and I am definitely interested to see where it goes. It has some good characters!

 An  interesting and messy world - though I couldn’t help but wonder with all the other technological advancements, why cloning hasn’t been done yet? like it seems to be the same kind of cloning we can already do with animals, right? (I don't know much about that lol). It's def more about mind stuff than clones though.

Some blurbs call this a feminist take on cloning and I can’t tell if they mean like; the head scientist’s pitch (if women can procreate by cloning ourselves we aren't bound by men!) here is feminist? I feel like using teenage girls from religious compounds as babymaking machines is not very feminist? the book definitely does critisize her methods a bit but past the half way point I feel like it got a bit lost. I had ethical questions I felt weren’t really brought up lmao. That’s not to say it doesn’t talk about medical ethics, religious cults, trauma etc, just once the plot gets going there’s so much happening I lost track of some of it. 

also there’s an intersex trans woman character who feels a little iffy to me?  or just has quite a stereotypical backstory, I guess (which is most of her character - she just shows up for a chapter). Though she is portrayed positively overall.