Review: An Engineered Handmaid's (Gentler) Future
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 09 8, 2011
The Clock King and the Queen of the Hourglass is a novella (99 pages) set in the landscape of a future Earth, where human beings have become androgynous, slow aging and sterile. The book opens to a miraculous event - the genetic engineering of the ova and sperm of earlier humans to create a fertile female. Humanity's survival depends on the production of a child to expand the available gene pool.The novella is a bit strange in tone, spinning between clinical impressions, the touching humanity of the heroine as she grows up to be a teenager (with a heavy burden), and sly commentary on our present-day society as viewed through the lens of this future version of humanity. The heroine, Liaei, stays true to age - a believable character, complete with embarrassment, intelligence, frustration and fears. The landscape is interesting - the ocean has become deadly, the sun has undergone changes, there are technologies that are vital, but, as with the aquaducts and plumbing after the fall of the Roman empire, no one knows how they work or how to repair them.While I enjoyed most of the novella, there were a few things that just didn't sit well, particularly in the second part with the Clock King, and the ending. Part of me was happy at the ending, but the other part was thinking how unlikley it was that it would be left like that.All in all, I enjoyed reading The Clock King and the Queen of the Hourglass; it stayed more human than many future earth stories I have read. I'd give this 3.5 stars, really, but Amazon only goes by whole stars, and I don't want to give it less than it's worth. I recieved this review copy from the author as part of LibraryThing's Member's Giveaway.