It’s been a hot minute since i had time to read. I’ve checked out several audio books and not even start them during the whole 3 week loan period. But I had a quick trip across the country back and forth in 3 days and this book was relatively short, so I was able to listen to it almost all the way through on the flights.
This book is very different from what I normally read. Slow paced, thoughtful, wistful, emotional. The POV character is an AF, an artificial friend created to assist young tweens from wealthy families as they transition to adulthood. Along the way there are hints of something darker–genetic engineering of the children that goes poorly, social upheaval of rebellious children, society falling apart and gangs of “fascists” living in the cities. But we see all of this only through the eyes of the child-like character, Kiara.
And the sun is a main character in the story as well, though is it really? Or is it only because Klara so fiercely believes in the sun as an animate living thing?
There were some parts of the book that felt like they really flowed well, and there are parts that didn’t work well for me. I really enjoyed the lyrical prose and language. I am working on a story with a main character who is a young girl, and the voice of Klara reminds me so much of her, or at least what I want her to be. But there are some (seeming) time skips, and some (seeming) glitches within the brain of the AF that I can’t tell are real or not, because they only come up during periods of high stress. I can imagine it simply being the CPU overclocking during stress, and then Klara’s response to this weird and abnormal behavior is what is being described. Or it could just be glitches.
The ending brings closure, in some ways, and opens up a lot of questions, in others. I had to do some digging on the internet to find out what actually happened. I liked this explanation/thread, and this one, to help with my interpretation of the ending. Obviously, spoilers abound there.
No spaceships, no aliens, but a really alien take of a very human world.
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