Much like if someone asked ChatGPT to create a novel based on 1984, The Handmaids tale, Fatherland, SS-GB and Inspector Morse

The book reads well and certainly creates a unique world as it’s setting but it seems to borrow heavily from other books in the genre to the extent that it seems wedged in for good measure.

There also seems to be a lot of the authors ego on the table. She’s a book lover so the plot is moved along and pivots around books. She went to Oxford so the book pivots around Oxford for reasons that I still can’t understand.

It’s good but frustrating and I was tempted to quit by the final third.

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A dystopian alternative history

This is an awesome work of dystopian fiction that also explores the power of literature to inspire and create social change .
One of my best reads of 2021

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2 people found this helpful

One not to miss!

Superb storytelling coupled with a terrific narration. Definitely in my top five Audible books ever.

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Great story

On the whole I enjoyed this book, but a couple of things grated a bit. The writing was a bit forced in places, descriptions sometimes didn't gel, and the narration wasn't exactly inspiring. Maybe I was unconsciously comparing it with Fatherland. But I did enjoy it and would recommend it

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3 people found this helpful

Disappointing

Anyone who wants to write a convincing counterfactual history needs a really good understanding of the real history. If you don’t have a good grasp of what really happened you will never understand what might have happened.

The central conceit of this novel is an incoherent mess. Why would German Nazis have wanted to create some kind of caste system for English women? Why would they have wanted them to focus on breeding? Nazis were definitely keen on German women producing children for the Fatherland. But what is their supposed motivation for encouraging the women of the puppet state that they have made of England to have many children?

And if it’s a caste system then people won’t move from one category to another. That’s the defining feature of a caste system, but the author doesn’t seem to understand the system which she has put at the heart of her novel.

And (trying to avoid spoilers) why does the traitor use such an easily falsifiable lie?

That’s just a few of the many infelicities in this book. I could go on (why is Rose’s sister supposed to be so bitter about the lack of foreign holidays when pre-war virtually nobody went on foreign holidays anyway?) but life’s too short.

Bottom line - don’t bother with this book

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1 person found this helpful

Very engaging

This is a well-written imagining of the U.K. if the Nazis had won the war. It’s really quite horrific to think that this is possible. Definitely worth listening to and very well read.

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Great book

really enjoyed this absorbing read/listen (I did both) - I thought I'd struggle empathising with some of the characters but it was so well written I did the whole book in 3 days

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Alternative history with a feminist focus

This is an excellent story of feminism battling Nazis. What more could you ask? Well, decent characters with explicable motives and no real cartoon villains. It easy to see how the heroine gets to where she’s at at the start of the story, privileged, sheltered and somewhat selfish but then the book takes on the notions of the power of books, of reading, of thinking. Many of the sentiments expressed could apply to lives at many points in history, including our own where Americans can nominate books to be banned from schools. All of that wrapped up in a fast paced thriller with fab older women!

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Unconvincing

It was imaginative, but more of a ‘Girls’ Own Paper’ jolly adventure/soppy romance than a taut political thriller (CJ Sansom’s “Dominion”, with the same premise, was very tense and a real page turner). Plot holes and anachronisms didn't help. People blabbermouthed secret plans and I’d lost patience with them all by the end.

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Mary Wollstonecraft in 1972?

Vindication of the Rights of Women was written in 1972 according to this novel set in the 1950s

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