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Spare and Found Parts eBook Sarah Maria Griffin

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Spare and Found Parts eBook Sarah Maria Griffin

There are three rules:
1. The sick in the Pale, the healed in the Pasture.
2. Contribute, at all cost.
3. All code is blasphemy.

###

It came together at her will, and a cocktail of delight and pride swelled inside her. She would hold this hand. She would be held by this hand.

###

“I am your maker,” you say. I open my eyes again and … love. Yes, this is love. Your hand is wrapped around mine. This is what it is to be alive.

###

— 3.5 stars —

Nell Crane’s life is tick-tick-ticking away around her. There is the audible, literal tick: the sound of her robotic heart beating. The sound that sustains her life – at least for now – but also sets her apart from her peers. Though almost all of the residents of the Pale are missing limbs, Nell is the only one whose deformity is hidden on the inside. And, unlike the biomechanical prostheses worn by her peers, the failure of Nell’s augmentation could mean her death.

There’s also the metaphorical tick of time, spelled out in painful detail for Nell by her once-beloved (now insufferable) Nan. All citizens of Black Water City are expected to contribute to the city’s progress in some way. Instead of traditional schooling, kids take on apprenticeships; by their late teen years, they’re expected present a contribution to the city council; marry a compatible someone and help with his or her project; move out to the Pasture; or do manual labor on Kate, the city’s answer to the Statue of Liberty. Contributions run the gamut, from nightclubs and bakeries to boost morale, to more practical projects, like health care and scientific advancements.

Nell’s parents did both: Kate is her late mother’s baby, Nell’s other sister; and Dr. Julius Crane invented the prosthetic limbs that everyone so proudly wears today. Their legacy is the albatross wrapped tightly around Nell’s neck, slowly but surely strangling her. How can she – a cranky, moody loner – possibly live up to the Sterling-Crane family name?

The answer comes in a plastic mannequin hand, washed up on the shore of the Livia River; in a herd of ancient elephants, genetically altered to have an impossibly long life span; and in contraband electronic music, recovered in secret in the Lighthouse. Nell will build her own boy, out of spare and found (or should I say scavenged and stolen?) parts. He will be her contribution – and her only friend. He will communicate with the long-dead computers and share his knowledge with the citizens of Black Water City. A sentient computer in boy form, he will show them that there’s nothing to fear in letters and number and code. Together, they just might change the world.

So this is a really interesting book. The plot’s a lot more complicated than I’d expected, in ways both good and bad.

Nell’s a misanthropic little firecracker. While I both liked and could identify with her, I didn’t entirely understand why her particular biomechanical part would single her out for such fear and ridicule. If anything, the fact that you can’t see her synthetic part should make Nell a little more normal; healed and fit for the Pasture, no? Or maybe it was the obtrusive ticking and long, angry scar that was really the issue?

I absolutely loved the interactions between Nell and Io; these scenes made the book for me. The bulk of the story is written in third-person/present tense, but these chapters are interspersed with much shorter scenes that challenge the reader to live difference episodes of Nell’s life as Nell; to see things from her perspective, in the most fundamental sense. (“The first thing is you are ten years old. Your last summer in the Pasture is rose and tender until it is sour and wrong.”)

These chapters are a wonderful surprise, but things get even better when the focus shifts to Nell’s android, Io. As exciting a challenge as it is to be asked to live another person’s life, imagine experiencing the world as another being: a newly born sentient computer. Io is all kinds of awesome, and his childlike wonder as he processes this new world around him is charming AF. Seriously, I just wanted to hug and squeeze and dance with him. (“Let’s hear it for the boy / Let’s give the boy a hand / Let’s hear it for my baby / You know you go to understand.”)

Music, in case you haven’t guessed as much, is a large part of the story. The death of the computers meant the death of a culture – or many of them, depending on what happened outside of Nell’s little island – including music. The very first computer Io reads is a “music box” containing a hundred thousand songs (give or take), which Io can play back for Nell. Though she loves these strange electronic songs, Nell’s ignorance (like Io’s wonder) is just the cutest:

###
“What is that song?” she ventured, hesitant to interrupt. Io turned to her, a mottled scrubber in his left hand and a rough brown mug in his right, dripping soapsuds, tiny bubbles, iridescent in the light streaming into the kitchen.

He cocked his head a little and replied, “‘Life on Mars,’ David Bowie, track four, side A, Hunky Dory, 1974.”

Nell was dumbstruck for a moment, then couldn’t help laughing. “I have no idea what you just said. That is the longest song name I have ever heard!”
###

It’s not entirely accurate to say that Io is Nell’s first and only friend; there’s also Ruby Underwood, who lives across the way, and Oliver Kelly, who apprenticed with Dr. Julian Crane alongside Nell (and much to her annoyance) and has propositioned her some nineteen times in the interim. Okay, so Oliver isn’t a friend, though I guess he could be (in the theoretical sequel, anyway). But he hangs around a lot and generally makes a nuisance of himself.

Though Nell is steadfast in her rejection of Oliver, I worried for most of the book that she would cave by story’s end and the two would live happily ever after (gag!)…thus reinforcing the popular tropes that stalking is romantic; “no” means “yes” (or, at the very least, “ask again later”); and it’s perfectly fine for dudes to ignore a woman’s wishes. All of which contributes to rape culture and exists on the same continuum as more “harmful” transgressions, including sexual assault.

THANKFULLY, Nell and Oliver do not end up together (though there’s a great twist that really throws this effed up dynamic into stark relief). Major bonus points to Griffin for that.

What I didn’t like: the world-building, which is hella confusing. The story takes place one hundred-odd years in the future, in the wake of a rather weird and puzzling apocalypse. Apparently the vast majority of humans became too reliant on computers – which were just becoming sentient – so another group of people (the world governments, maybe?) sent out a electromagnetic pulse to kill the machines (the “Turn”)? And then there was some sort of an epidemic that poisoned the environment and caused birth defects in humans? And the animals are mostly all gone too? Except for elephants, who somehow survive on a small island even though they require vast spaces to roam and travel up to thirty miles a day? (But I digress.) And we can’t resurrect computers due to possible aftershocks? Huh?

Also, there’s a Pasture for healthy, healed, and mystical people (healed? do some people spontaneously regrow limbs?) and the Pale for manual laborers and those sporting “gross” computer parts. Yet there isn’t any resentment among the worker drones … who are basically maginalized by the Pasture peeps for their disabilities? Does not pass the smell test.

** Full disclosure: I received an electronic ARC for review through Edelweiss. **


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Spare and Found Parts eBook Sarah Maria Griffin Reviews

Interesting concept, poor execution.
This book is great! It's like Miyazaki's Frankenstein. Real tender, real emotional.
This book is so unlike anything that I have read. It could be seen as dystopian, but it doesn't feel derivative. I love that the main character is a woman of color in a STEM field! I think the synopsis tries to suggest a romance plot that isn't really present in the novel, but it's more of a coming-of-age thriller, I would say. Stunning imagery, set in a location reminiscent of Ireland, and exciting. Also, PERFECT cover for this novel.
Feminist Frankenstein ! Tthough to be totally honest, the feminism was very secondary. A beautifully tragic coming of age story where no one is perfect. What a delightful story! If you are looking for nice neat characters and a story with all the ends gathered up in a perfect bouquet in the end, you will not enjoy this book.
Now, if you have the soul of an adventurer and the spirit of an inventor.....jump right in. This water is fine.
If there is one thing I value above all else in literature, it's being different. And that's why I enjoyed this book so much; I realized after 2 chapters, I've not read this story before.

Before Spare Parts I would have assured you one more dystopian novel would possibly put me off reading for life. But this is not that story. It's fresh, interesting, and well written. I need a break from my non-fiction, and this was a pleasant holiday.
There is a lot going on under the hood in this one. Or inside the kettle, as it were. It's about childhood and coming of age. It's about the fire and frustration of creation. It's about the pressure of others' expectations. It's about rebellion and revolution. It's about love, it's about consent, it's about the spaces we create for ourselves and those others create for us. Ultimately, it's about humanity. About the surprising places you find it, and where it should be, yet is not. It's a very old story, and a unique one, all the same.

Nell is one of the most thoroughly developed characters I've met, at once endearing and frustrating and strong and brittle and sometimes all of these and more, all at once. She inhabits a world that feels as real as she does, and possible. I will never look at my cell phone - or listen to David Bowie - quite the same way again.
There are three rules
1. The sick in the Pale, the healed in the Pasture.
2. Contribute, at all cost.
3. All code is blasphemy.

###

It came together at her will, and a cocktail of delight and pride swelled inside her. She would hold this hand. She would be held by this hand.

###

“I am your maker,” you say. I open my eyes again and … love. Yes, this is love. Your hand is wrapped around mine. This is what it is to be alive.

###

— 3.5 stars —

Nell Crane’s life is tick-tick-ticking away around her. There is the audible, literal tick the sound of her robotic heart beating. The sound that sustains her life – at least for now – but also sets her apart from her peers. Though almost all of the residents of the Pale are missing limbs, Nell is the only one whose deformity is hidden on the inside. And, unlike the biomechanical prostheses worn by her peers, the failure of Nell’s augmentation could mean her death.

There’s also the metaphorical tick of time, spelled out in painful detail for Nell by her once-beloved (now insufferable) Nan. All citizens of Black Water City are expected to contribute to the city’s progress in some way. Instead of traditional schooling, kids take on apprenticeships; by their late teen years, they’re expected present a contribution to the city council; marry a compatible someone and help with his or her project; move out to the Pasture; or do manual labor on Kate, the city’s answer to the Statue of Liberty. Contributions run the gamut, from nightclubs and bakeries to boost morale, to more practical projects, like health care and scientific advancements.

Nell’s parents did both Kate is her late mother’s baby, Nell’s other sister; and Dr. Julius Crane invented the prosthetic limbs that everyone so proudly wears today. Their legacy is the albatross wrapped tightly around Nell’s neck, slowly but surely strangling her. How can she – a cranky, moody loner – possibly live up to the Sterling-Crane family name?

The answer comes in a plastic mannequin hand, washed up on the shore of the Livia River; in a herd of ancient elephants, genetically altered to have an impossibly long life span; and in contraband electronic music, recovered in secret in the Lighthouse. Nell will build her own boy, out of spare and found (or should I say scavenged and stolen?) parts. He will be her contribution – and her only friend. He will communicate with the long-dead computers and share his knowledge with the citizens of Black Water City. A sentient computer in boy form, he will show them that there’s nothing to fear in letters and number and code. Together, they just might change the world.

So this is a really interesting book. The plot’s a lot more complicated than I’d expected, in ways both good and bad.

Nell’s a misanthropic little firecracker. While I both liked and could identify with her, I didn’t entirely understand why her particular biomechanical part would single her out for such fear and ridicule. If anything, the fact that you can’t see her synthetic part should make Nell a little more normal; healed and fit for the Pasture, no? Or maybe it was the obtrusive ticking and long, angry scar that was really the issue?

I absolutely loved the interactions between Nell and Io; these scenes made the book for me. The bulk of the story is written in third-person/present tense, but these chapters are interspersed with much shorter scenes that challenge the reader to live difference episodes of Nell’s life as Nell; to see things from her perspective, in the most fundamental sense. (“The first thing is you are ten years old. Your last summer in the Pasture is rose and tender until it is sour and wrong.”)

These chapters are a wonderful surprise, but things get even better when the focus shifts to Nell’s android, Io. As exciting a challenge as it is to be asked to live another person’s life, imagine experiencing the world as another being a newly born sentient computer. Io is all kinds of awesome, and his childlike wonder as he processes this new world around him is charming AF. Seriously, I just wanted to hug and squeeze and dance with him. (“Let’s hear it for the boy / Let’s give the boy a hand / Let’s hear it for my baby / You know you go to understand.”)

Music, in case you haven’t guessed as much, is a large part of the story. The death of the computers meant the death of a culture – or many of them, depending on what happened outside of Nell’s little island – including music. The very first computer Io reads is a “music box” containing a hundred thousand songs (give or take), which Io can play back for Nell. Though she loves these strange electronic songs, Nell’s ignorance (like Io’s wonder) is just the cutest

###
“What is that song?” she ventured, hesitant to interrupt. Io turned to her, a mottled scrubber in his left hand and a rough brown mug in his right, dripping soapsuds, tiny bubbles, iridescent in the light streaming into the kitchen.

He cocked his head a little and replied, “‘Life on Mars,’ David Bowie, track four, side A, Hunky Dory, 1974.”

Nell was dumbstruck for a moment, then couldn’t help laughing. “I have no idea what you just said. That is the longest song name I have ever heard!”
###

It’s not entirely accurate to say that Io is Nell’s first and only friend; there’s also Ruby Underwood, who lives across the way, and Oliver Kelly, who apprenticed with Dr. Julian Crane alongside Nell (and much to her annoyance) and has propositioned her some nineteen times in the interim. Okay, so Oliver isn’t a friend, though I guess he could be (in the theoretical sequel, anyway). But he hangs around a lot and generally makes a nuisance of himself.

Though Nell is steadfast in her rejection of Oliver, I worried for most of the book that she would cave by story’s end and the two would live happily ever after (gag!)…thus reinforcing the popular tropes that stalking is romantic; “no” means “yes” (or, at the very least, “ask again later”); and it’s perfectly fine for dudes to ignore a woman’s wishes. All of which contributes to rape culture and exists on the same continuum as more “harmful” transgressions, including sexual assault.

THANKFULLY, Nell and Oliver do not end up together (though there’s a great twist that really throws this effed up dynamic into stark relief). Major bonus points to Griffin for that.

What I didn’t like the world-building, which is hella confusing. The story takes place one hundred-odd years in the future, in the wake of a rather weird and puzzling apocalypse. Apparently the vast majority of humans became too reliant on computers – which were just becoming sentient – so another group of people (the world governments, maybe?) sent out a electromagnetic pulse to kill the machines (the “Turn”)? And then there was some sort of an epidemic that poisoned the environment and caused birth defects in humans? And the animals are mostly all gone too? Except for elephants, who somehow survive on a small island even though they require vast spaces to roam and travel up to thirty miles a day? (But I digress.) And we can’t resurrect computers due to possible aftershocks? Huh?

Also, there’s a Pasture for healthy, healed, and mystical people (healed? do some people spontaneously regrow limbs?) and the Pale for manual laborers and those sporting “gross” computer parts. Yet there isn’t any resentment among the worker drones … who are basically maginalized by the Pasture peeps for their disabilities? Does not pass the smell test.

** Full disclosure I received an electronic ARC for review through Edelweiss. **