I wish I could give this book more stars because the premise was certainly intriguing and different, but ironically, the thing that put me off this book was the complicated language used!
For example, words like obeisance, pejorative, verbiage, and simulacrums crop up on nearly every page. I don't consider myself uneducated by any means, but I find reading a book like this very disjointed as it interrupts the flow of the narrative by being overly complicated. As someone once said, you truly understand something when you can explain something simply. I don't know if the author did it deliberately to make a point about how smart they are or what, but it made it a less enjoyable read for me.
The author also seems to have a bit of a vendetta against the Jehovah's Witnesses - they must have some personal experiences there because there's a 25 page rant about how they ruined Pearson's childhood! It was interesting from the point of view of someone who's not religious as I didn't know much about the Witnesses beforehand.
The story itself is thought-provoking and I liked the ending where the world seems to have gone too far the other way. It was clever how the author knitted in real-world events to the story and explained them through the Mental Parity lens. It makes you wonder how easy it would be for the world to get taken in by this lunacy; maybe it's worrying how likely it is!
For example, words like obeisance, pejorative, verbiage, and simulacrums crop up on nearly every page. I don't consider myself uneducated by any means, but I find reading a book like this very disjointed as it interrupts the flow of the narrative by being overly complicated. As someone once said, you truly understand something when you can explain something simply. I don't know if the author did it deliberately to make a point about how smart they are or what, but it made it a less enjoyable read for me.
The author also seems to have a bit of a vendetta against the Jehovah's Witnesses - they must have some personal experiences there because there's a 25 page rant about how they ruined Pearson's childhood! It was interesting from the point of view of someone who's not religious as I didn't know much about the Witnesses beforehand.
The story itself is thought-provoking and I liked the ending where the world seems to have gone too far the other way. It was clever how the author knitted in real-world events to the story and explained them through the Mental Parity lens. It makes you wonder how easy it would be for the world to get taken in by this lunacy; maybe it's worrying how likely it is!