Review: Vox by Christina Dalcher

Whew… this book made me sweat with anger.. just reviewing my notes & prepping this review is making me hot again, smh. I am vehemently against organized religion, the atrocities committed in the name of one religious book or another throughout the history of human-kind is a greater lesson that cannot be ignored. Let’s get into this review…

Vox by Christina Dalcher

• Category – Dystopian Sci-Fi
• Length – 336 Pages
• Read Time – 1 Day
• GR Rating – 3 Stars

Vox is a dystopian sci-fi set in the United States, religious fanatics have taken over government & thrown the separation of church & state right out of the highest window. Women are not allowed to be independent individual people, once again relegated to only being of value & worthy of any minimal respect based on her connection to a man. No longer able to hold jobs, have their own money or bank accounts, read books or even the mail that comes to their homes, have passports, travel or speak more than 100 words per day. The premise of this book is infuriating! I legit started sweating I was so mad, burn the whole world down idgaf type of mad.

People born female are fitted with a “bracelet”, a single wrist cuff, that counts their word usage day to day. Allotted just 100 words per day, any words spoken over that limit set off the cuff to shock the wearer. Exceeding the 100 word limit is dangerous, not only because of the shock increases in intensity the more the word limit is exceeded but also because the religious nut government can choose to further discipline offending women.

RIP to the chatty Patty’s of the neighborhood.

None hetero people are also persecuted by this religiously oppressive government, of course. Forced into what essentially amounts to slave labor conversion camps to “turn them” hetero. It’s always so insane to me how often & quickly religious fanatics are to do terribly harmful things to other humans & still call themselves righteous. The ideas in this book are not far-fetched, aside from the electro-shock cuffs everything else has already been a reality for women in this country, because of religious fanaticism. There’s already been a time when women were not allowed to hold jobs, have their own money &/or bank accounts, live alone, further their educations, file for divorce from their husbands, control their own reproduction & so on & so on. There already have been times in this countries history when women were second class citizens, property of a man. Non-hetero people also have seen vile oppression in this country behind a religious book, to this day.

We have the POV of Dr. Jean McClellan, former doctor because of course she was forced out of her quite important job into home servitude for her husband. Jean lives in Washington DC, with her husband Patrick & two children, Steven & Sonia. We begin the story after the religious fanatic government has already been in power for some time. The children attend school & it’s apparent early on that education has become a dumbing down religious indoctrination opportunity, the days of children learning reading, writing & arithmetics are gone, especially for girls. Schools are separated by gender making easier to provide gender appropriate education to students, no use wasting time having girls learn the alphabet when they’ll never need to read or write. Jeans son, Steven, has happily drank the kool-aid, of course its not oppressive to him, at least not in a way he has the mental capacity to understand, naturally he thinks it’s great to be important & valuable just for being a boy. It isn’t until Steven is personally effected that he decides maybe going along with the status quo isn’t the way. After hooking up with his ‘future wife’ & next door neighbor, the indoctrinated fool tells, expectedly she is harshly punished while he gets to go back home & continue on like nothing happened. No surprise there, as is standard with oppressive religious fanaticism, rules for thee (women) not for men. This happens at a time when the religious fanatic government is amping up their control of the people, moving into the next stage of their plan. Choosing to make a further example of Steven’s girlfriend, they chop her hair to parade her across their national stage, broadcast as special programming for everyone to see. The school assigns hate mail projects to the male students, giving them lists of forbidden bad words to write to their former extended classmate, to tell her what a terribly disgusting & worthless person she is for straying from her prim & proper place in the flock. Driven over the edge Steven decides he has to save her, he doesn’t, he’s a weak minded fool.

Jean is asked to go back to work, for & by the government. They know she is a brilliant neuro recovery research scientist & need her to further their insidious plans. Jean accepts because she is given the opportunity to speak again, the cuffs coming off her & her daughters wrist for the duration of her temporary employment with the government. She also sees this as an opportunity to reconnect with her politically active college friend who tried to warn her of what was to come & finally disrupt the status quo. While working on this project the team discovers that they aren’t formulating a cure for brain trauma, instead they were hired to create a neuro toxin. A neuro toxin that the religious fanatic government plans to use against government leaders across the world. No surprise there, the nuts need to force their beliefs & views on everyone, anyone could’ve seen that coming from a mile away. The ending portion of the story feels a bit rushed & unfinished. Jean & her team succeeded in stopping the development & production of this neuro toxin to be used by the government as a weapon, by developing it 1st & using it against the very people who were plotting against the rest of the world.

I was left asking now what… okay this specific group of religious zealots in government were dead but they couldn’t have been the only ones. The book ends in a very unfinished way, Jean escapes the country with a fake passport & I guess we just hope for the best for the rest of the US.

Thank you for joining me for another review, I’d love to read your thoughts on my review & of course on the book too. 

• Have you read this book?
• What was your favorite part? (Jean’s inner monologue about her son, not sorry I agree)
• What was your least favorite part? (The rushed/unfinished feeling ending)
• How many stars do you rate this book?

Hasta la próxima – V