Review: Sleep Donation Cured Me of Insomnia
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 05 7, 2014
I was compelled to read this after Russell's appearance on Fresh Air, but I was incredibly disappointed to find that it took me far longer to finish this novella than it should have.The irony lies in the title. Sleep Donation, a rather conceptual story about a world being overrun with chronic insomnia and how sleep has become a donated commodity similar to blood, was managing to cure my insomnia every time I opened it by putting me to sleep after reading only a couple pages.I think this mostly has to do with Russell's incredibly heavy reliance on exposition to sell her idea, a trap that newbies to this genre typically fall into, where they feel they must explain EVERYTHING about a world without first delivering us a character we care about.There is almost no active storytelling going on here. Through the endless explanations of her main character, we learn about the sleep crisis, and the sleep-deprived "orexins," who are dependent upon sleep transfusions to stay alive. We learn all the ways in which people are encouraged or coerced to donate hours of their sleep to help these people, and how the main character manipulates donors by using the harrowing plight of her sister who died from extreme insomnia. We learn about some of the strange cultural things that have arisen around a world that suddenly finds itself less and less able to sleep. We learn about "Baby A," a universal sleep donor, whose sleep is so pure that it's become the most precious weapon they have in their arsenal. We learn about "Donor Y," who introduced a rogue nightmare into the world's sleep supply, and how it's making people not want to sleep at all. Of course, we learn about the nightmare, but it's never described to us so that we could truly understand WHY these people would rather suffer without sleep than deal with a nightmare. We learn about Night Worlds, these curious places of nighttime debauchery created by people who either willingly refuse to sleep or can't sleep.We learn about all these things and more, but we don't SEE them. They are simply told to us in a way that is only compelling on the surface, but not believable in any way because it's all tied to a main character who isn't sympathetic or relatable in any way. At some point, an attempt at humanity is made by giving her a brief sex scene, but that's about as closed to fleshed out as we ever really get with her. And when a "twist" happens about 2/3 into the story, it's not really a twist at all. It's some contrived plot complication that shouldn't really even be a complication. In fact, I couldn't find a single reason at all to side with the protagonist on all her hand-wringing and moral vexing. If selling Baby A's pure sleep to a lab who could synthesize a cure is SO wrong, then I guess I don't want to be right. In fact, it doesn't even match up to the character's earlier proclamations to Baby A's parents that they hope to be able to synthesize clean sleep for people. That the whole moral foundation of the story rests on this particular premise makes the whole story pretty much a throwaway waste of time. I really wanted to quit reading after that revelation, but I was already so close to the end. And as far as the ending goes, it would be far too generous to call it that. It was more like the whole thing ran out of gas.If a writer is going to be so weird and conceptual with a story idea, they should commit to it in a way that allows the reader to become part of that world. Don't explain every single little thing. Let us discover them along with the character. Envelope the reader so deeply in what's happening that they're too fascinated to put the book down. Instead, Russell decides to treat us to overly precious language choices and absurd ideas for which no one even cares to suspend disbelief.Russell doesn't strike me as a natural science fiction author. She certainly has the creativity to think up fantastical ideas, but if she wants to branch out into more speculative genres, I'd suggest that she work harder to bring the reader into the worlds she's created rather than have us sit perched above them, struggling to stay awake.