oliviasbooks's Reviews > Skinned

This was a quite gripping piece of science fiction, right in the line of Scott Westerfeld's Uglies series, Mary E. Pearson's The Adoration of Jenna Fox and Circuit of Heaven by Dennis Danvers.

All of these titles tackle the question of what is really needed to make us human, what should be scrapped up and remolded, when large parts of our body or our mind are gone - if we can that is, of if there should be a physical limit to holding up our excitence here on earth, of if we are allowed to tamper with an organism that has officially already ceased to be and to try our hands at creating artificial intelligence that mimicks or copies the ones of actual persons, and finally, of if the new person - physical or digital - will be me when is has aquired my memories and my personality.

Robin Wasserman's approach to point out - not answer - these dilemmas is a very thrilling and emotional one. It resonated within me for a while this morning. Certainly it helped that the post-war, post radioactive crises setting with a strict split of the world's population into bonus-points-stuffed haves in spacious, digitally/technically enhanced country-based buildings and company-bound, no-rights, no medical-favours have-nots in contaminated city-ruins had a pretty realistic feeling.

Although the book ends on a cliffhanger, I do not need to rush out to get the sequel - which doesn't mean I would mind to read it eventually.

I recommend "Skinned". But maybe I would recommend The Adoration of Jenna Fox and Circuit of Heaven more.