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Air by Geoff Ryman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A tiny mountain village in loosely fictionalized 2020 Asia is the test site for Air, the internet beamed right into your brain. Chung Mae is a proper wife and a fashionista – the test and her collapsing world make her become a whole hell of a lot more.



Marvelous. This is how a mcguffin story ought to work – Air doesn’t make the story happen, the story happens to it. But then again that’s Mae all over. She is this intense, homegrown, bootstrapped, amazing kind of savvy, sharp enough to cut herself sometimes, too. This book is about her and her village and her tumultuous personal life, and a battle for corporate control of technology, and education, and being the village madwoman. ““Why do people treat the past as if they’ve lost a battle that the present won?” she demanded, fists clenched.” And that, and big powers and tiny people.



It’s not perfect. There’s a plotline that’s just . . . odd. Trust me, you’ll know it when you see it. And I raise my eyebrows at Ryman’s choice of a made up Asian country with a soundalike name – Karzistan. There is something suspicious to me about drawing so many analogies and references to actual Asian countries while avoiding the rigor and exactitude of, you know, actually writing about Kazakhstan and its people. Still, it’s really not fatal for something this tense and prickling and smart.





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