Review: This Great Hemisphere by Mateo Askaripour

Dystopian fantasy/sci fi is not my general reading preference but Mateo Askaripour's novel This Great Hemisphere sounded interesting. At least it did until I discovered that it felt like nothing so much as a mix of The Hunger Games and our own current racist world.

Opening in 2028 with a young black woman who faces terrible racism before she gives birth to the world's first invisible baby, the novel then moves 500 years into the future where society is bifurcated between the Dominant Population (DPs) and the second class Invisibles. Institutionally, the entire Northwestern Hemisphere (ostensibly including the former US) discriminates against the Invisibles, shunting them off to live away from the DPs, employing them in low level and menial tasks, providing them with addictive and life and energy restricting fast foods, rounding them up for tracking annually, etc.

Sweetmint, a young Invisible woman who goes by Candace in the greater DP world, is determined to rise beyond expectations and use her incredible intellect not only to help herself, but help the people she loves and lives with. She has, against all odds, earned an internship with the hemisphere's great inventor, giving her a glimpse into a world she's only dreamed of. But when the Chief Executive of the Northwestern Hemisphere is assassinated and the murder is pinned on Sweetmint's older brother Shanu, who has been missing and presumed dead for the past three years, she sets out on a quest to find him before the police and politicians do, jeopardizing everything she's earned so far. At the very least, she must find Shanu before one politician in particular, bloodthirsty and ruthless, does. Her search ultimately makes her question the truth as she knows it and question the people she thought she knew.

The world building here is rather uneven. There are pieces that are incredibly detailed, like the rumoyas (scents) that the Invisibles use to recognize each other, the elaborate ways instituted so that DPs can "see" Invisibles, and the mandated annual registration. There are other pieces that are vague or incomplete, like the reader is missing steps in a formula. On the whole though, the world of the novel is not appreciably different than our own. The parallels are obvious and unsubtle. Sweetmint's discovery of a resistance movement is a bit haphazard and comes out of nowhere, and the ending to the novel is incredibly rushed. The novel feels like it's trying to be a future novel but instead it comes across, in most ways, as one firmly grounded in our own present. There are aspects that could have been interesting if they had been more developed but over all, it was disappointing, derivative, and obvious. Hunger Games fans looking for a read-a-like might enjoy this but I didn't.

Thank you to the publisher for a copy of this book for review.