Reviewed by Angie on
The Body Electric is all about Ella, a girl who works for her mother in their "mental spa." Rich people come there to relive their glory days and happiest memories. Ella's mom uses it to visit her last good day when her disease becomes unbearable. But, as the disease breaks her down more and more, it becomes harder to hold onto that memory while in reverie. So Ella steps in to attempt the impossible. She's also going to enter a reverie, linked to her mother, to manipulate the memory into staying strong. I'm sure you can image what this technology can do in the wrong hands. And thus starts all of Ella's troubles, as she's asked by the Prime Administrator to enter the mind of a representative believed to be connected to terrorists. A dangerous job.
The world of The Body Electric is full of all kinds of advanced technology: primarily androids and nanobots. Androids are used as construction works, nurses, street vendors and more. They're designed to look human, but they're incapable of individual thought--something Ella's now-deceased father had been working on. Most humans are injected with nanobots which improve their sight, hearing, and more. Nanobots are also suppose to serve as connections to Ella's mother's damaged brain synapses, but nothing can really penetrate brain functions as well as science and medicine would like. I loved all of this! It felt imaginative, but also very real. Some of this would be great to have for real, but then again, after finishing the book, maybe not.
The Body Electric's plot is the pretty typical "you're not who you think you are, but you have to find out and save the world" type. I was super into it in the beginning, since there's a lot of weird surprises that I just had to know how they worked! I was in a state of "what in the world is happening" a lot, which wasn't bad. It was quite exciting, except when the plot starts to drag in the middle as Ella starts getting closer to answers but isn't quite there yet. That made the book feel really long, before it started to pick up again near the end when it was nonstop reveal and twist after twist after reveal.
So, where The Body Electric kind of lost me was in regards to the semi-romance--there's really no romance at all, but there's clearly a love interest, if that makes sense--and one of the twists. Ella meets a boy named Jack, who of course knows more than she does, and claims to know her. She's never met this boy in her life! Or has she? Of course she has, but her memories have been tampered with. I was not satisfied by the explanation of how it was done (it's glossed over, it just happens), nor the motivation for removing him. It felt very cliche and out of place, and I just didn't believe the villain would worry about that (yes, I have to be vague, sorry!). Then there's a twist regarding Jack, and I really had to roll my eyes. It's a great twist, except that Ella would have noticed it. You have me trust me on this one, but she really would have noticed. There's no way she couldn't have. That kind of ruined some of the shock, since it felt like a twist for the sake of a twist, but details were overlooked.
I had a couple of other world building issues, but I won't get into them, since at the end of it, I really enjoyed The Body Electric. There's a lot of amazing ideas here, and some quite disturbing scenes. I was actually surprised by how disturb I became at some points. It also added to my paranoia about the direction technology is going. There were some great references to the Across the Universe series, too! I really liked seeing Godspeed mentioned, since this is set at the time it was...lost. Anyway, this was a great read, despite its issues.
Read more of my reviews at Pinkindle Reads & Reviews.
Reading updates
- Started reading
- 13 October, 2014: Finished reading
- 13 October, 2014: Reviewed