I have to preface this with: I hated this book with a passion, but there are some areas where I wonder if I may have missed a point the author was trying to make.
Briefly: I'm a scientist, whose mother worked full time during my childhood in the Ecology department of our local University (I missed her a lot); there is also a decent probability I'm neurodivergent (not autistic; awaiting diagnosis) and my husband and friends work with autistic children. I thought I was going to love the book for the simple reason that there is a lot of overlap between my life experience and what the plot. The opposite happened, and I loathed the MC Theo with a passion.
I wasn't sure however if Theo was meant to be unlikable. Did other people think the author was trying to 'punish' Theo's mistakes? I thought that may be possible, because of the way his son dies (his dad points him to the cairn in the water, although he knows his son is prone to take action and hurt himself when something makes him anxious). Or did you feel like Theo was meant to be an imperfect hero?
Here are the things I disliked or hated about him:
– His science knowledge is full of mistakes (you can argue with me, but I warn you I'm a biochemist with two chemist as parents; all 3 of us hold PhDs). Errors abounded in the way he tried to describe plant respiration, sugar highs (not real), genetic stability and genetic drift, ion formation around a moving body of water, etc.
– His conspiracy theories. He refused to consider medication for his son after Robin broke another kid's jaw. And Robin was barely 10 years old if I remember correctly. He refuses medication because 'Big Pharma' but doesn't enroll his son in therapy, doesn't try to create a routine for him (all highly recommended methods, supported by science), instead he enrolls him in a clinical trial testing an unproven method. The method works for Robin, but when the study is shut down now Robin just reverts, and again his dad doesn't consider any other therapy! I have friends with autistic children, and for them therapy and an occasional short-term medication treatment made a big positive difference, so this no-big-pharma-no-therapy non-sense was rooted in what?
– His hypocrisy: he mocks corporations that use large data centers, or burn fossil fuels, calls people who support them Neanderthals at one point, but he wants his research satellite built, despite the incredibly high carbon footprint it takes to build it, launch it, and store and analyze the data. This is why I was wondering if maybe the author didn't like Theo either, or if he just didn't realize those details.
And there are other issues: the mother made no sense (she's a pixie dream girl , although I could see it as Theo's memory of her being altered by grief) and she is just a fridged wife by the end; the one autistic character is killed so the neuro-typical MC can grow. And OMG the Ethics failures of the research team that studied Theo! You would absolutely get shut down for encouraging a child too young to assent (doesn't matter how mature Theo thinks he is!) to promote your product publicly. Plus telling him you're exposing him to his dead mom's neural patterns, without also engaging a psychologist? (this may also violate HIIPA laws, but that's the least of their problems). Yeah, an Internal Review Board would totally shut you down (I do have experience working in clinical trial development, you can't just do whatever you want with your patients, especially minors, especially if they're not yet 14).
So, what did I miss? What was your take on Theo's faults and strong points?
by Neina_Ixion