Book Blog #306: Severance by Ling Ma

 

Title: Severance

Author: Ling Ma

# of Pages: 291 (hardback)

Genre: Adult Fiction, Science Fiction, Dystopia

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Synopsis: Candace Chen, a millennial drone self-sequestered in a Manhattan office tower, is devoted to routine. So she barely notices when a plague of biblical proportions sweeps New York. Then Shen Fever spreads. Families flee. Companies halt operations. The subways squeak to a halt. Soon entirely alone, still unfevered, she photographs the eerie, abandoned city as the anonymous blogger NY Ghost. Candace won’t be able to make it on her own forever, though. Enter a group of survivors, led by the power-hungry IT tech Bob. They’re traveling to a place called the Facility, where, Bob promises, they will have everything they need to start society anew. But Candace is carrying a secret she knows Bob will exploit. Should she escape from her rescuers?

Review: I'm surprised thriller wasn't a top genre for this book. 

It's interesting because this book felt like a cross between the last two books I read: Migrations and Beautiful World, Where Are You. This is probably me noticing small similarities; Ma also doesn't use quotation marks around dialogue like in Beautiful World, Where Are You. Both Severance and Migrations were told in first person with time skipping (something I don't enjoy). However, where Severance and Migrations differ is that Migration's time skips helped build suspense and slowly unveiled a mystery while as Severance attempted to do a lower scale version of this with Candace's life during the Shen Fever, but it's much less exciting.

Beautiful World, Where Are You and Migrations also differ from this book in another major way; these books made me feel something - they touched my heart or evoked emotion (usually sympathy/sadness) at least once throughout their stories. For Severance, I was just scared during some parts (there's always a bit of a thrill when characters are exploring an apocalyptic world and the suspense of what would happen/show up). Candace might have been a more realistic protagonist than Franny in Migrations (and this might have been because Ma may have drawn from her experiences to develop this character since they have similarities in their backgrounds), but when it came down to who's story was more interesting, I would have to say it was Franny's.

This story actually is a little too real; it was written pre-pandemic, but there are some startling similarities between how this dystopian world was impacted by the Shen Fever and how the real world was affected by COVID-19. This is no fault on the author/book, but since everyone has lived through the pandemic, Severance didn't offer much unique perspective in terms of dystopian world building (thus making it less of an interesting story to read). Considering that she wrote this before knowing how COVID was to be handled in our past and present, I do still applaud her unintentional prediction of how the world would respond to a pandemic/epidemic. 

The final gripe I have with this book is that the ending was incredibly unsatisfying to me. It feels like this book should be part of a series, but at the same time I don't know how interested I would be in reading the rest of the series. The ending felt like Ma was tired of writing and left a lot of questions unanswered. Sometimes there's an art of leaving the reader wondering, but in this case it felt like the story barely got anywhere when it suddenly ended.

On a more positive note, I really liked the theme of change vs routine that Ma decided to explore with this book. Set in New York, one of the most upbeat and diverse cities where things seem to be full of change - everything is happening in New York. This backdrop was an interesting choice to show how the people within can still be stuck in a monotonous lifestyle. While Severance's plot an overdone apocalyptic journey, it still sends a powerful message on how a capitalistic society can negatively affect our values and in turn affect how we lead our lives. 

This book had potential, but it falls short. It's a quick read, but I would not be recommending it in a hurry; the theme is worth reading about, but I feel like there are other books out there that will have a similar message AND everything that this book was missing.