Review by Booklist Review
Isolated on an island off the coast of Washington State, Athena Rao, 17, has never known an identity other than the one granted her by her famous father, King Rao. A tech billionaire who managed to overcome the challenges of being born into the lowest caste tier in India, King Rao continues to develop increasingly complex creations with loads of accompanying controversy. "Clarinet," for example, which allows the user to imbibe another life, asks what sacrifices are expected when it comes to love. Athena breaks free from her father's smothering hold but must come to terms with the feudalistic society that he has largely helped shape. The most unsurprising, and perhaps the most devastating, aspect of Rao's technology-heavy brand of capitalism is that it is old wine in a new bottle. The very caste system he escaped in India is one he perpetuates in his adopted land. But everyday citizens, consumed by the threats of climate change, might not stand for the status quo. Alternating between Rao's childhood in a small Indian village, his early student days in the U.S., and the dystopian society in which Athena has to function, Vara's original debut delivers challenging and weighty themes with a sure hand.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Technology journalist Vara's potent debut revolves around a global society run by a corporate board. King Rao, legendary tech mogul and brainchild of the new world order, has died in mysterious circumstances, leaving his daughter, Athena, to preserve his legacy. Her first challenge is to prove herself innocent of accusations of conspiring to have him murdered. The Harmonica, an internet-connected device King invented and implanted in Athena's brain, gives her access to all his memories, and she uses it to relive the traumatic circumstances of her father's birth in 1950s India, which resulted in his mother's death; his childhood years spent in the tiny village of Kothapalli before his migration to the U.S.; and his invention of the Coconut, a revolutionary computer that brought about immense global progress and indirectly led to his downfall. Even more pressing than Athena's need to prove her innocence is her mission to distinguish herself from her father's legacy and spread the truth about the board's role in climate change, which leads her to seek out the "Exes"--estranged citizens who have rejected the current model of government. Throughout, Vara ingeniously identifies portentous links between history and the book's present, such as the parallel Athena draws between the rise and fall of the East India Company with the Shareholder government run by her father. And with King "cursed" at birth, Vara succeeds at making her family portrait the stuff of myth. This is not to be missed. (May)
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Review by Library Journal Review
King Rao created a whole new world with his personal computer, the Coconut, and a corporate-run government now reigns supreme. His daughter, Athena, belongs to a resistance group wanting to live tech-free--except that she's in prison, accused of her father's murder and stuck with his memories via biotechnological innovation, which allows her to revisit his Dalit childhood in 1950s India. Former Wall Street Journal Vara, from a Dalit background, claims O. Henry Prize and Rona Jaffe honors.
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A debut novel rewrites the history of big tech into a mythic immigrant story of dystopian proportions. King Rao is an Indian immigrant of Dalit origins who comes to the U.S. in the 1970s on a graduate school fellowship and finds success in the Seattle-area tech scene. His story could be common enough, but in Vara's boldly reimagined history, he's made to embody all such immigrant dreamers, inventing a computer, software, and social network that ultimately dominate the world with an algorithm-run Shareholder Government. Rao and Margaret, his Irish American wife and design partner, become the most successful businesspeople of the last two centuries until an attempt to introduce artificial intelligence into human brains goes awry. The novel is narrated from prison by Rao's estranged daughter, Athena, who provides details about her father's origins in India and her own experiences with the resistance, known as the Exes (as in Ex-Shareholders). Vara's strengths are in her clever wordplay and trenchant observations of an algorithm-led dystopia made up of a highly stratified and inequitable population: tech IP holders, good-looking influencers, and a global worker/servant class. Gwyneth Paltrow and Goop even make an appearance. Some of Vara's minor characters are less well drawn, though, and the line between satire and stereotype at times grows thin. For example, the sole Vietnamese character is described as having "a subservient expression, this man of at least thirty years, as if he expected the young white cop to pat him on the head"; a female Chinese singer is hypersexualized for a convenient plot point; and there are few women tech entrepreneurs apart from Margaret. However, as Athena and fellow Exes race to awaken Shareholders to the dangers of ignoring the phenomenon known as Hothouse Earth, the reader may realize that the existential threat is not quite as science fictional as it may at first seem. Even for tech geniuses, climate change may soon be beyond any algorithm's ability to repair. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
