Review: Arch-Conspirator

Arch-Conspirator by Veronica Roth
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When I saw Veronica Roth at Powell's in Beaverton last fall, all copies of Poster Girl in stock included a bookmark advertising this, Roth's next book, a dystopian sci-fi novella retelling of the ancient Greek play Antigone. Something else I have in common with Roth, in addition to having written my first manuscripts while I was supposed to be doing college work - we both read the old play in high school. For me, it's been about 15 years now - God, I'm old - so I'd largely forgotten most of it, but a lot of it came back to me as I read this book.

This time around, Roth gives us a bite sized book that stays as thematically heavy as any and all of her previous work. In this futuristic Antigone, set in the world's last livable city after nuclear hell rained down at some point in the distant past, there's a little less incest and a lot more Gattaca. Okay, sure, Antigone in this book is still betrothed to her cousin Haemon, son of Kreon, but does it really count as incest when there's a case to be made that they might be the only living couple who wouldn't be at genetic cross purposes that way? The reason for that is that the vast majority of citizens in this world are designer babies of sorts, whose genetic makeup is essentially a 3-D printed mix and match of bits and pieces of Ichor uploaded into the Archive. And Antigone, along with her three siblings, is one of the few people in this world who was conceived naturally.

So yeah, Oedipus and Jocasta were exiled and reviled for having sex, but not because they didn't realize they were already son and mother. No, in this world, natural conception is treated as a grave sin, because it means the resulting child isn't created by computer in a world that likes to worship at the altar of AI a little too much. And yet, because patriarchy never wants to die, women are treated as nothing more than childbirth vessels, something else for which Antigone is a rebel. (There's also a brief point where she thinks about what it would be like to be a man, and how trans men who may become pregnant are treated as women in this society to the point of misgendering, and how she is a woman regardless of what choices she wants to make with her life and body.)

As timely as this book is with its themes, in a world where the environment and reproductive rights are under attack in so many places, the novella format doesn't really do it many favors. The thematic elements are strong, but the book's short length, only a little over 100 pages, makes it hard for there to be much character development within. It certainly doesn't help that the book switches between POV's every chapter, with several different first person POV's between Antigone, her siblings, Haemon, and even Kreon - and unfortunately, as is a common problem in some of Roth's past works (Allegiant in particular comes to mind), it's very hard to distinguish any one POV from the other at times.

But those themes help make this book absolutely worth the read - and so does the oddly hopeful ending, especially for a book based on a famous ancient Greek tragedy.

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