Ok so this is a really good book. Every once in a while I
read a book that’s like really good and sends you to another world, has a sense
of humor, and leaves you with something to think about. I hate being cliché and
whatever, but this is definitely one of those.
The story follows the lives of two people, Patricia and
Laurence, who represent two ways of seeing the world. Patricia is on the side
of nature and magic, and learns to be a witch, while Laurence is a scientist
who makes machines like a two-second time machine and tries to transport
humanity to another planet.
It starts off when the two of them are really young. I
didn’t love this part as the way it’s written it just seems as though the
entire world is hell bent on making their lives miserable which is just rough
to read about and also gives you the sense that it’s not accurate. But I also
figured that since this is coming from a kid’s perspective (sort of, it’s third
person really) that’s just the way that they saw the world as well.
But also the author has such a great sense of humor. Like
there’s an assassin who loves ice cream that you can’t help but feel sorry for,
and Laurence tries to make a supercomputer in his closet with the name
“CH@NG3M3” which is amusing.
While we are on the subject of said computer, it does indeed
reach sentience and changes its name to Peregrine. As in, you know, the falcon.
It takes both Patricia and Laurence’s influence to get there, which is
significant because it even says flat out later on that Peregrine is the child
of Laurence and Patricia. So it takes both technology/science and nature in
order to create life. Artificially at least. Which is why it is a piece of
technology, but has the name of a bird.
Anyways so the two of them grow up and apart, but then
reconnect in San Fran years later. And then there’s a superstorm that sends the
whole world into chaos (this bit was a little unclear to me, like we’ve have
superstorms before, why does this send us into WW3?) and these opposing
factions start fighting it out. So there’s Patricia and her witch crew on one
side, and Laurence and his tech crew on the other. They both come up with very
different solutions to how to save the world.
The tech people want to send us to another planet. This
fails because in order to do so we would have to destroy all of earth and
everything on it.
The nature people want to send us back to an age where
humans are feral and avoid one another compulsively. This fails because the
people who made it are so separated from the rest of the world that they don’t
see how this could be a bad idea. An important point that Patricia makes is
that really important witches lose touch with the world because they’re so
isolated, and they can’t really do magic with others anymore.
So in the end, you need both, the human-centric vision of
the techies and the world-centric view of the witches. You can’t create
anything without both sides of it.
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