The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book is a pitch-perfect example of a boring dystopia. Its actual SF features literal dream police, making the Minority Report into a coasting middle-management nightmare. Social, credit scores are latched onto your literal dreams. Having issues? Are you cranky?

It can and will be used against you if you don't conform.

The problem with this is that it's OUR reality already. Digital surveillance, AI analysis, and systemic assholery makes us live this NOW.

It's a horrible novel because we're already living it. Or it's a great novel because we're already living it. Either way, it's rage-inducing.

And yes, it's an indictment of capitalism. Creating prisons and prisoners for the profit motive. Creating a rule system that can't be beaten, but can easily be abused to keep people in their place.

Again, we're already here. And it's pitch perfect for how it describes people's reactions, how they just want to get along, carry the burden because it can get so much worse if you don't, and how utterly cowed we are.

Bringing up a strike, and how effectively it is squashed, is also accurate to our lives.

And just as depressing.


Do I like this novel?
No.

Do I think it is true to life?
Yes.

Take from that what you will.

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