Book Review: Stupid, Perfect, World

It’s been a while since I’ve read anything from Scott Westerfeld and man have I missed him. I forgot how much I love his books. What’s great about this book is it’s not really a book, it’s a novella.

Being only 55 pages long it literally only took me about two hours to read so for those of you that hate long books, this will be a great fit for you. Set in a utopic world where people no longer have to sleep, deal with illness, and can teleport anywhere they want to go, students are required to take a class that’s only purpose is to show them how bad the world was before it became the utopic society they have.

The main characters, Kieran and Maria, both have to give up something for two weeks. Kieran, chooses to forgo sleep, not fully understanding what sleep is, and Maria, chooses to give up her hormone regulations, thinking it’ll be an interesting experiment.

I thought the concept of this book was very interesting and a little different because many of the books that have come out recently have focused on dystopias, whereas this novel portrays a world that is perfect. At first it sounded pretty good to me but then once the two protagonists start trying out their experiments it makes you realize how much you’d be missing if we lost those things.

Yeah, our hormones can be really annoying sometimes, especially when you meet that hot guy who turns out to be jerk but you can’t help but be attracted to him. But there’s also the goods things, like when you get butterflies for that awesome guy you just met at Starbucks who asked you for your number.

And seriously, who doesn’t love sleep? When your head hits the pillow after the longest day of your life? Fantastic.

I thought Westerfeld did an excellent job with this novella. It was short and sweet, making a point but not dragging it out. He also didn’t rush the plot. It was perfectly timed and just felt like a shorter book.

Even though he doesn’t go in depth on this world he’s created and what led to it being the way it is that’s okay because you get so drawn into the characters and what they’re doing that you forget to even think about that. Instead you find yourself falling for these characters and laughing at their confusion of things we deal with every day. One of my favorite parts was when Kieran couldn’t figure out how we fall asleep in the first place and couldn’t get how we could waste so much time sleeping.

The only thing I didn’t like about this novella is that I wanted it to keep going. Then again that might ruin it because the ending was pretty good. Definitely a must read.

Stars: 5 out of 5

Borrow or Buy: Definitely buy. It’s really cheap (only $1.99 on the Kindle) and it’s a really short read so you can read it and re-read it fairly quickly.