"Death is the only thing keeping us in line…"
PostMortal is a complex and unique read that takes a new
spin on the 'apocalyptic' genre. Because Drew Margary created a world that
isn't teemed with disasters and deprivation but instead one where everyone is
young, no one ages, and hardly anyone can die. And it is that, the concept of
forever and longevity, which ruins the human race.
PortMortal is a book set in the future, a very near future of
2019 where a 'cure' for aging has been created. It is not immortality; you can
still die from murder or disease. What the cure assures is that no one will
ever die of a ripe old age; the age that you get the cure at is the age at
which you stay. The story follows John Farrell and the sixty years of his life
after getting the cure, twenty-nine forever.
This book is brilliant in its deep understanding of what a
cure for aging would essentially create. It seems like something fine and dandy
but it is not, because as with anything in the world there is controversy, and
the controversy around this is enough to tear the world apart. The books gives
this away in style, in the several time skips that happens, because while more
and more people clamp unto eternal youth the world only gets worse and worse.
And it really questions the morale behind, how good is it to actually get the
cure. One of my favorite things about this book is that is leaves me
questioning, because hypothetically, if this cure was real, would I myself get
it? And it's really hard to give a straight yes or no answer. And I think
that's what Margary was trying to get at with this book, if you were given the
chance to essentially be immortal, would you?
Magary also does a fantastic job in developing the character
of John Farrell, because while he does in fact remain twenty-nine throughout
the story he is not really twenty nine. Everything that happens in the world,
every death that comes upon him, changes him and matures him in some way. And
so at the end when he was eighty-nine years old, I really felt like he was
eighty-nine years old. Character development in a specific art that can be done
so eloquently sometimes that it just shocks you how well a person can write it,
can really show it to you, can really make you feel it. To think of this, particularly
when his character had the eternal age of twenty-nine, makes him brilliant.
Overall it is thought provoking read more than anything. The
style and balance of the story, the way the character grows, it was all
brilliantly done.
Fin.
-Keshia
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