Divided States Of America, by Aithal

[Note:  This book was provided free of charge by Reedsy Discovery.  All thoughts and opinions are my own.]

There was admittedly much I did not appreciate about this book.  I had expected a novel that was thoughtful and reflective about the state of the world, and what I got instead was a fable that attempted to do too much with characters that were not nearly interesting enough and that reveled in the irrationality of left wing climate and political panic.  This is the sort of book where the characters claim to hate politics but cannot seem to talk about anything else, and where the author confuses his misguided demand that the right wing just abandon their political efforts and let the left-wingers control everything for the sake of the planet with something that is sane and reasonable.  This book is part of the reason why people from the left wing and right wing are so divided, and I speak for many of this book’s potential readers when I say that I would happily prefer to see the nation divide than to let the left wing remain in charge and act according to their misguided climate and other kinds of panic.

This book is a textbook example of what happens when someone writes to suit their agenda and forgets that the people that are (potentially) read this book do not share their agenda.  Someone whose political worldview comes from the mainstream media and who has a high idea of the scientific validity of global warming models may think of this book as a sensible one, but others may see this book’s climate science as being equally valid as the book’s playing fast and loose with time travel.  As for me, I was personally offended by the book’s suggestion that going to the past and not voting in Trump was what was necessary to save the world from coastal flooding and the destruction of Florida.  Considering him better than the alternative, I did not find much to appreciate about this book, largely because it is embedded in the political discourse that it claims to disdain and I am too honest about my own political worldview to appreciate a book like this one which is based on an entirely hostile worldview to my own.  If America is a divided country, the fact that an author can think that rank partisanship is a cure for our divisions is a big part of the reason why.