Abi McEwen – Guest Columnist Instagram: @abisliterarylounge
Welcome to QualityLand, please take a seat. Your life information, including every online presence that has been created for you, has been entrusted to Big Data. Do you accept this? Your options are: ‘Yes.’
Great! You have been ranked from 1 to 100 based on 42 subcategories of what makes a great human. Your actions can change this score, of course, but because of your agreement to share your data, we have corporations making a lot of decisions for you! Isn’t that great! Our AI at QualityPartner determines your perfect partner, so there is no need to date around. Our algorithms at TheShop know exactly what you need, when you need it, so you will never have to go grocery shopping. And our robots cater to your every need. Just kiss the screen to rate them 5-stars. Also, don’t forget to vote for John of Us! He may be an android, but his algorithms are perfect, so there is no need to fear. Right?
The story follows a man named Peter Jobless. His life is… well, he’s alive, I suppose. He works at a machine-scrapping shop and has a life score in the single digits, so his options in life are very limited. When TheShop sends him an item he doesn’t want—something the company denies being possible because, well, the algorithms are perfect—he teams up with his ragtag band of robots he’s technically not supposed to have. It should be pretty simple with a drone who is afraid of flying, a writing robot with writer’s block, and a combat robot with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Okay, so maybe this book is a little too sci-fi-machine-world for you? Not to worry, there is also a love interest! Or two actually. Melissa Sex Worker has the lovely job of writing hundreds of harassing comments under news articles. It doesn’t really matter if she technically believes the things she’s saying or not; she just gets paid to write them. There is also Kiki, who randomly shows up in Peter’s life and seems like she stepped right out of the Matrix movie. She unofficially spends her time blackmailing various people who have been caught using adult sites. Officially, she doesn’t exist. Peter definitely likes her, despite her mysterious past, and they go off in the woods a couple of times to “listen to jazz” (Peter’s words, not mine).
This book is one-part election-year-drama, two-parts quest-to-right-a-wrong, with a splash of romance and sprinkles of ads. Really, there are ads throughout the book, as well as “news” articles and comments so you can get the full experience of life in QualityLand. There are also a lot of pop-culture references, which I personally don’t enjoy in novels, but it was tolerable. (I think the author may have a thing for Jennifer Aniston.) I loved the story, though, and will forever be recommending this book. It’s perfect for fans of George Orwell’s 1984, readers of translated literature, and anyone interested in artificial intelligence. It’s a fun read if, and especially when, you don’t think too hard or deeply about the significance of the topics brought up. With strong world-building and his fun writing style, Marc-Uwe Kling easily earned my 5-star rating.