The Resisters by Gish Jen

I am regularly avoiding two genres: SF and vampire narratives. SF may jump into my TBR once the year or less though, especially when I am looking for some new intellectual challenges. 

The Resisters by Gish Jen appealed to me because I aminterested in the topic of resisting dictatorships in a subversive way and dystopian ambiance is the best recommended for such settings. However, the author not being a SF writer herself, it complicated a bit the reception, at least on my side of the story.

We are projected into an AutoAmerica, governed by an AI-generated Aunt Nettie, split between Netted - connected in different ways to the AI-government, and the Surplus - caught between survival and deprivation. And there is Gwen, born with a golden hand, subverting the system through her baseball passion as part of the NetU community. 

The AutoAmerica is challenged by the climate change and the most important geopolitical change ist that Russia and China are one.

I may confess that although I enjoyed the reading, it was very difficult for me to put together all the pieces of the story. The dystopian details per se are not necessarily clear and took longer to understand the intricacies - for instance, related to the cllimate change aspects, among others. The references to sport - particularly baseball - as a medium of freedom and dissent was interesting and ignited my interest but sometimes it felt artificious to connect it with the rest of the story.

The Resisters was not a displeasant read but also didn´t changed my opinion that SF of any kind may simply not be my genre of choice.

Rating: 3 stars