Womb City

    

Title: Womb City

Author: Tlotlo Tsamaase

Published: Erewohn Books, January 23, 2024

Pages: 418

Genre: Cyberpunk Sci-fi

Nelah seems to have it all: fame, wealth, and a long-awaited daughter growing in a government lab. But, trapped in a loveless marriage to a policeman who uses a microchip to monitor her every move, Nelah’s perfect life is precarious. After a drug-fueled evening culminates in an eerie car accident, Nelah commits a desperate crime and buries the body, daring to hope that she can keep one last secret.

The truth claws its way into Nelah’s life from the grave. 

As the ghost of her victim viciously hunts down the people Nelah holds dear, she is thrust into a race against the clock: in order to save any of her remaining loved ones, Nelah must unravel the political conspiracy her victim was on the verge of exposing—or risk losing everyone. 

Set in a cruel futuristic surveillance state where bodies are a government-issued resource, this harrowing story is a twisty, nail-biting commentary on power, monstrosity, and bodily autonomy. In sickeningly evocative prose, Womb City interrogates how patriarchy pits women against each other as unwitting collaborators in their own oppression. In this devastatingly timely debut novel, acclaimed short fiction writer Tlotlo Tsamaase brings a searing intelligence and Botswana’s cultural sensibility to the question: just how far must a woman go to bring the whole system crashing down?

In a shocking break from the norm, I actually read the blurb for this book. And even after that, I was not prepared for just how heavily this book was going to hit on infertility and pregnancy loss. But don't worry, there was so many more heavy themes that that was the least of my issues.

This book gave me a prolonged existential crisis, like I'm still crisising about it. It definitely also gave me nightmares. This book is downright scary for sure. BUT so worth it.

The concept of body-hopping is fascinating. The author explains the rules of life spans and life cycles. I know the explanation was thorough, but I listened to the audiobook so I've lost some of the details. (In saying that, I think that the audiobook was the way to go for me, reading the words would have been EVEN SCARIER.) But body-hopping is the process of transferring your consciousness into a new body after you die. It's how this world essentially invents immortality. There are a ton of rules, and this isn't a new concept to sci-fi as a whole, this take on it was really well done. I think tackling concepts like inclusion and privilege, in the backdrop of a society where people can shed their skin basically on a whim, is really eye-opening. And the way in which this society lords privilege over people, the things that denote privilege, are somehow still skin-based. It's wild, but so very realistic as well.

Then you have Nelah. Nelah is amazing and so confusing. On the one hand, she's conquered all kinds of things to become a successful architect. She's married and has a good relationship with her family. Or her body's family? (That's one of those funky things to do with body-hopping and we do not have time to get into it here, it's WILD though.) At least that's what she'd like you to believe...

But you quickly realize that Nelah is a bit of a liar. Especially to herself. And her main focus at this point in her life is having a baby, and it's so easy to see why the more that you get to know her. Ultimately, I'm only scratching the surface here, but you have to read this to get it. It's very scary, very dark, but SO good. If you have the emotional bandwidth to tackle some of the darker themes, I highly recommend this.

Ratings

Stars: 5/5