Reviewed by jeannamichel on
If writing a book had rules, Erin Bow broke them all. The action was superb, keeping readers on their toes. If those readers choose to stick around for that long, that is. The Scorpion Rules sounds fantastic. The premise is original; the idea of keeping royal children as hostages of peace is amazing. It could have been a tremendous page-turner but instead, it fell short.
With most science fiction and dystopian novels, authors need to take some time to describe their world—to build it up from scratch, or from our predicted world in the future. Bow does this to an extent but stops explaining her world, as if she got bored with it. There are robots (the correct Bow term is AI) but what do they look like? There are scorpions who are also robots, I think.
This book is teetering on the edge of being a joke and being serious. This is the book where Erin Bow translates goat bleats, the goats having even more ridiculous names then their conversations. This is the book where royal children farm and garden. This is book where holy utterances, a highly quotable piece of work by the master of the world, is written in overdramatic sass which is entertaining but also strange coming from a robot. This is the book where the protagonist pretends to be in The Bachelor, while having less emotions than that sass robot.
Talis, the master of the world (and he won’t let you forget it), is the only character worth mentioning—all the others fall incredibly flat. It doesn’t surprise me that Greta herself chose such an ending. I’m sure readers are meant to see a difference between first-page Greta and last-page Greta but I can’t find any. She is flat and a bit boring. It is still unclear as to why all the children choose her to be the leader of the pack; where does all this power come from? Is it because she’s from Canada? Talis, on the other hand, has spunk but is absent in most of the novel.
The Scorpion Rules could have been awesome—should have been awesome. Instead it’s a mashup between Animal Farm and The Bachelor with robots; for me, those ingredients don’t make for a good or even okay novel.
Reading updates
- Started reading
- 7 September, 2015: Finished reading
- 7 September, 2015: Reviewed