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In the near future, an ill young man receives organs from his now-vegetative twin sister that are not just transplanted into him to replace his own, but integrated with his to make better organs. A bit later in the future, a young woman is repaired with inorganic inner parts to bring her back to life and function after a deadly car crash, though none of that is really visible to outsiders. Later in the future, a boy who was engineered to be super-intelligent lacks both emotional intelligence and correct body proportions and ends up being surgically altered so he can work in the ocean alongside dolphins and manatees.
Even later, two young men who have been working as slaves mining platinum on asteroids manage to escape back to Earth — which is tricky because their bodies have been drastically changed, many machine parts replacing and augmenting their natural forms so they can do the work, and they stand out from others who haven’t been modified in the country they land in.
Far into the future, humanity has changed drastically and some “Protos” (or unmodified, less “advanced” people) are kept in reservations. They are genetically diverse and only allowed to mate with others who look like them and not given equal rights or even allowed to leave the reservations. Then a devastating disease starts killing off the advanced “humans,” leaving a few young Protos to venture off their reservation to find out what the future holds for them.
In each of six stories in this compelling and thought-provoking young adult book, young people have been affected by humanity’s push to improve upon itself, whether through genetic engineering or surgery or both. As time goes forward, the urge to do nature one better results in more and more drastic (and what one would definitely now consider “unnatural”) results. All characters have been changed physically in some way, many without a choice. All face some level of derision; all wonder if they can possibly still be “human” given what they are.
Arwen Elys Dayton writes in an author’s note that she had been “poring over articles about gene editing, methods of growing human organs outside the human body, changing the body’s structure and function using bioelectronics interfaces and microscopic mechanical devices” and thought at first that these would be a miraculous cure for disease and aging and so on. Then she thought, “We will definitely find some way of messing this up in spectacular fashion.” Thus the book was born. Stronger, Faster, and More Beautiful explores what it means to be human, how these advances could affect how we see each other and the world, and how it will be just to live our lives in the ways we’ve always done when so much about “life” is changed.
The book for a number of segments really reminded me of Neal Shusterman’s Unwind series, with its young characters whose parts are harvested for organ and tissue transplants for adults and “wanted” children. The tone was similar as it explored social mores and ethics surrounding bodily improvements.
Though the stories are loosely connected, I still had to shift gears as each ended and a new one began. But it didn’t take me long at all to get deeply involved in the lives and challenges of each character. I will definitely be thinking about this for a while.
Rated: High. The only drawback with this book is its content. There are right around 10 instances of strong language and more uses of mild and moderate language. Sexual content is present in about half of the stories. Teens have sex, with detail varying from almost none to a few paragraphs’ worth of information. One character reflects on a night he and a buddy had a contest to see how many girls they could have sex with during a beach party. Violence itself is fairly minimal, but there are a number of spots that are somewhat disturbing or more disturbing, with characters being forcibly changed physically. One scene describes (fairly briefly) a whole warehouse full of surgical modifications happening to people in almost slaughterhouse style. I think the language and sexual content could have been toned down just fine while still conveying the impact of some of the possibilities that lie ahead if ethics aren’t agreed upon early on.
*I received an ARC in exchange for my honest review.
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