Just finished reading this last night and I have so many thoughts. First, I started this book strong. From reviews and the fact it was a Pulitzer finalist, I had high hopes. After the first dozen or so pages, I even commented to my wife how much I loved the author's style, the way she evokes feelings, moods, and images with just a few, efficient sentences. The author doesn't shy away from the vanal and the grotesque. I devoured the first half, but then started struggling, and eventually considered DNF'ing, more than a handful of times.
Short summary: the story is told from the point of view of Athena, the daughter of a revolutionary technocrat in the near future (think Elon Musk mixed with Steve Jobs and a few dashes of Bill Gates and Bezos). Embedded in her is a neural connection to the internet and other people's brains. The novel weaves three narratives: her father, the eponymous King Rao, and his birth and upbringing in mid-century India; next is King Rao's rise as a tech wunderkind, establishing Coconut (Apple meets Amazon), and eventually foisting on the world a totalitarian corporatist government, where we're governed not by presidents but by a single elected CEO. The last thread is the near-future, where Athena escapes from her father's self-imposed exile and meets Exes, anarchists that reject the technocratic totalitarian government.
If that sounds like too much, it's because it is. The author's ambitious scope gets in the way of her need to be super tight and concise. This novel really should have been a series of 3 or 4 books. The world-building of the future was very rushed. A climate crisis, a totalitarian dystopia, brain interconnectivity, excessive consumerism, major world decisions decided by a computer algorithm, a disgruntled band of rebels. It was a lot, but it was frustratingly all glossed over, which is sad because it was the main reason I picked up the book.
Furthermore, the other thread, King Rao's rise as a world leader, reads like a Wikipedia page. Bullet points interspersed with wooden dialogue. Ironically, it was the multi-generational story set in India that most intrigued me. It reminded me of Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude.
In all, I was frustrated by this novel and hoping to get other people's takes. There was a lot of gratuitously horrible stuff that happens in the last 50 pages that seemed more like a last-minute attempt to raise the stakes, but ultimately I was left not caring all that much.
by A_bleak_ass_in_tote