(Before you read this review, I would just like to state that everyone has their own set of reading appetites. When once a certain article of literature does not suit this appetite, we converse on it and proceed to point it out. But in no way does it intend the defamation or degradation of said writer. As a part of this community, we have immense and immeasurable respect for our writers, who accomplish amazing feats for mankind akin to any other glorified field, and our readers who are connected by this soft and supple yet the strongest bond of what we call the love of books and literature.)

Right. With that graciously neutralizing preface out of the way, let’s delve into this.

Okay. Let me just put it this way. There are disturbing dystopias that meaningfully terrify you to your very core.

And then there’s Brave New World.

I mean I did not say that its implicative writing is meaningless, but I am saying it’s pointless.

Pointless in a way, well in many ways, that it didn’t quite warn us of anything.

I mean, are we supposed to hail free speech? And stick to the creative liberty of individual thought? And not brand every human under a caste? And not biologically hinder a human being’s chance to use all his abilities?

The point I’m making is, that in a good dystopia, we are shown a world, and it leaves us with a rather direct thought of a predominantly singular point of where our present systems are flawed.

This might not make complete sense. Trust me, I know well enough when I’m at the point of not making sense to myself.

It’s just that the prose had just so many drawbacks from a good dystopia.

The entire plotline was so endearingly confusing.

The conflict took forever to start, and once it did, it never really had a direction. During almost the entirety of the read, I did not feel that beautifully compulsive urge to keep turning pages.

The protagonist we were offered didn’t really have an arc. We kind of leave Bernard just as we find him: despising the system and still abiding by it for fear of expulsion from his dominating caste and status.

And to be honest, identifying the protagonist itself, was sort of completely confusing. And thinking and writing this makes me feel like a bad reader, but I was actually very uncomfortable and uneasy during the read because of it.

I was never really able to identify the goal of the plot. What was trying to be achieved?

(Okay, I do not want to compare this work with other works as that would come under comparative literary study, something I regard immoral.

Henceforth I will compare this book, with my understanding of popular literature and dystopias. And since my current literary prowess is completely under the hood of unexceptional and doubtful at best, I feel relatively comfortable in my moral grounds doing so)

Right. In a ‘good dystopia’ under ‘my literary prowess’ we are introduced to Point A, with our characters and a terrifying world, and our characters yearn and pursue to reach Point B. But as the plotline unfolds, and our characters try to move towards Point B, all their aims are stunted and their efforts prove futile as their dystopian situation pushes them back to Point A or even further backward.

In the sequence of events, the characters are greatly changed, and we as horrified readers read on, as the characters are almost dehumanized and made to act or believe what they don’t.

(Now this is not all of dystopia. This is my version of how this novel could have been better)

Spoiler Alert (if that can be said)

For one, Bernard and Linda’s trip to the Savage Reservation was too slow-paced. There was no climactic lead-up to the conflict that was supposed to finally arise.

When they finally met the two pseudo-savages and brought them back to civil society, I was left with an empty feeling, waiting for something that was supposed to catch my intrigue. Something that would finally grasp me and say this here is conflict. Now you wanna see what’s gonna happen next.

That never happened.

The lead-up to the reveal of the pseudo-savages was entirely too predictable after the onslaught of exposition given by the Director beforehand.

And the fact that our protagonist changed (literally) mid-way was, well okay, very unique, and not a literary convention. But that’s the thing. Literary conventions are there because they work. And, for me, sidestepping from stuff that already works is well, it can be done in engineering, but does not fit my reading comfort zone.

Apart from my orthodox standards regarding having one definitive protagonist, John also didn’t quite make sense to me.

John, in the novel, showed what would happen, if a normal (slightly cult-induced-insane) person would go into the world of Brave New World. Even if he escaped to a lonely lifestyle, he would still never be able to live alone and ultimately his only freedom would be in the ending of his own life.

For some reason, I am just not okay with that. Deal with it.

Finally, it was an absolute overkill of world-building.

I mean. The amount of descriptive writing and magnitude of world-building was so shoveled down the reader’s throat that the actual plotline and arcs, of which there were little, were hard to grasp.

And, I’m going to be honest, this may be directed by my bias of engineering over the medical field, because for too much of the book’s reading time, I had to endure medical terms and biological imagery and explanations.

And I’m not saying engineers are better than doctors.

I’m just saying that it was greatly unpleasant for me to sit through the reading of an absolutely barbaric amount of force of biological terms and processes I had no wish to understand.

And finally. Yes, finally, I want to end on a good note. The sequence when John and Mustapha Mond have a conversation near the end of the book was a very attractive piece of writing for me. I really enjoyed that scene, and did appreciate its presence, although it did feel like the whole concept of the book was trying to be explained in this little sequence so that by the end we had an idea of what really happened, or what was supposed to happen.

And on another final note, the writing style was sort of akin to George Orwell’s.

Now. I am not saying, and believe me when I say this, that ‘Brave New World’ is nothing remotely near to a George Orwell dystopia.

But, during the read, the style of the lengthy paragraphs, and at some points during Bernard’s pov, it did feel like I was reading Orwell. Although of course, that kindred tie breaks in its entirety if we talk about what the book, in its totality, entails. (pun not intended)

Get it? Because both the novels have totalitarian forms of government? Excuse my uncontrollable impulse to validate literary jokes.

But it is a recommended read because it’s an oldie and a relative fan-favorite.

Thanks for your reading time. I wish upon you lovely blue skies and peaceful consumption of your reading appetite.