My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publisher: Orbit
Summary: Years in the future, dead women in cryogenic dating farms await rich, lonely suitors to resurrect them and take them home. LOVE MINUS EIGHTY follows interconnected lives touched by these dating farms. There's Rob, who accidentally kills a jogger, then sells everything to visit her, seeking her forgiveness but instead falling in love. Veronika, a socially-awkward dating coach, finds herself responsible for the happiness of a man whose life she saved against his will. And Mira, a gay woman accidentally placed in the heterosexual dating center near its inception, desperately seeks a way to reunite with her frozen partner as the centuries pass. In this daring and big-hearted novel based on the Hugo-winning short story, the lovelorn navigate a world in which technology has reached the outer limits of morality and romance.
I very much enjoyed this one. So much so, that I put the author’s other book Soft Apocalypse on my library list because such a thing was mentioned by one of the characters in this book and I am eager to read more.
In this story we follow a group of people who become more entwined as things unfold. Rob, Mira, Winter, Veronika, Nathan, Lycan & Lorelei. They inhabit a future world where mathematically beautiful women who’ve died before their time are basically put on ice until such time as some wealthy man will have them repaired and resurrected. There’s a technology that allows them to be awakened for “dates” in brief intervals but they’re immobile and confined to their coffin at the creche. It’s quite the morbid & cruel set up. Mira, is one of the “bridesicles” and as if it’s not bad enough that she’s long dead, she’s stuck going on “dates” with men in hopes of being reanimated though she’s gay. It seems no one checked that out before dropping her in at CryoMed & all she wants is to see her love, Jeanette. I was so invested in her story & her’s had me sad there was no epilogue at the end. I’ve read that Mira is the main character of the short story that spawned this full length novel, so I’m glad I got to meet her & Jeanette here.
Rob, Winter, Veronika, Nathan, Lycan & Lorelei were interesting to follow with varying degrees of rootability. Though I was never much a fan of Nathan or Lorelei their endings felt honest and real. Rob, Winter, Veronika & Lycan were most interesting in watching how their stories crossed paths with each other & evolved. They were the most transformed characters and I was very satisfied with their endings.
Overall, this is an almost-favorite for me. The only thing keeping me from giving it five stars is that I’ll likely not read it again but this will remain with me for quite some time & I am a little regretful that I borrowed this one from the library & so don’t own a copy. I enjoyed it that much. 4.5 stars.
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