Arch-Conspirator

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I did appreciate seeing the ancient world remade into a futuristic one and this was only a novella-length story, so perhaps should not have wished for too much to be included, but I did still hope that a bond with the principal characters and for more fleshed out personalities to be included. I sat down to read this on a Sunday afternoon and blasted through it in one sitting. Engaging from the start and expertly paced for a novella of this length. A retelling of Antigone that hones in hard on ideas of bodily autonomy and self determination in ways that ring unfortunately true of the time and place in which it is being published. It had moments of goodness. There some great quotes and I liked Kreon thru other’s eyes but for a short story, not much was explained. THERE isn’t much world-building in Veronica Roth’s sci-fi retelling of Sophocles’s classic Greek tragedy Antigone. Then again, in Arch-Conspirator, there isn’t much world. A dusty dystopian city (Thebes in the original, but it isn’t clear where we are in the reboot) is all that remains after a thinly sketched environmental polycrisis has turned humanity into an endangered species. Veronica Roth is the New York Times best-selling author of Arch-Conspirator, Poster Girl, Chosen Ones, the short story collection The End and Other Beginnings, the Carve the Mark duology, and the Divergent series. She lives in Chicago, Illinois with her husband and dog.

Arch-Conspirator (ARC) – Righter of Words Book Review | Arch-Conspirator (ARC) – Righter of Words

One man, High Commander or no, doesn’t have the right or the power to declare cruelty to be morality just because something has affected him personally. There is a word for the man who tries…tyrant.’ The stifling of women is presented in the novella not only through Antigone but also through Ismene and through Eurydice, Kreon’s wife, as well as through the specter of Jocasta, whose memory cannot be banished or denied. Before her death, she was working on artificial womb technology that would have freed people capable of childbearing from the obligation to carry on the species through their own personal reproductive labor—no joke, in a world in which we are told that fifty percent of pregnancies end with the death of the pregnant person. Antigone doesn’t ring any bells. Is that because we never covered it in school? Or is it because I wasn’t the greatest student and just don’t remember it? 🙂 Do you think it’s too sparse for someone completely unfamiliar with the source material to enjoy? Why are they on another planet? What happened to earth? Unless I missed it which is totally possible, it wasn’t explained. A retelling of Antigone was not what I was expecting to see as the latest book by Veronica Roth, but this science fiction reimagining of the Grecian tragedy is fantastic!Veronica Roth, of “ Divergent” fame, brings to life an imaginary re-telling of the Greek myth, “Antigone” with her new novella, “Arch-Conspirator”.

ARCH-CONSPIRATOR | Veronica Roth | Tor Publishing Group ARCH-CONSPIRATOR | Veronica Roth | Tor Publishing Group

This will be a month full of Antigone for me! I've had to read an Antigone retelling for my Comparative Literature class, I've now read this retelling, and I'm going to see a theatre production of it next week. Oedipus and Jocasta are in the Archive. He was a politician and she was a scientist so brilliant that she could not be denied even though women cannot be scientists. They died in a riot not long after Oedipus won the only election in the city’s history; whether that riot is connected to their crime of conceiving their four children naturally is never made clear. But their actions are infamous, and so Antigone and her three siblings are at best tolerated rather than beloved in the city and in Kreon’s household. As many reviewers have already pointed out, this is a retelling of Antigone in a futuristic sci-fi world. For some reason that isn't expanded on, the world has gone to shit (doesn't it always) and people are living in a sort of dystopian world where they don't have children naturally (even though women are required to have children) and when people die, their "Ichor" (basically reproductive cells) are extracted and stored so that other people can basically ~design their kids from the archive of stored cells. That being said, it truly is incredible what Roth managed to accomplish in this novella. It makes some really harrowing insights into female autonomy and family loyalty. Arch-Conspirator is unlike anything I read before and I adored how unique and engaging it was. I simply couldn’t put it down. It’s disturbing, powerful, and unforgettable.Perhaps it wasn’t because we were family—perhaps it was because we were children of Oedipus, warped though we were by our genes. And Oedipus had almost started a revolution—he was a symbol, and so were we. And what better way to take the power from a symbol than to claim it as your own? For some reason, you talk to people about food shortages, power outages, contaminated water, the government disappearing people—you might as well be speaking another language. But if you tell them their High Commander wants to send a pretty young thing into space to waste away? Suddenly they’re listening.’ Veronica Roth’s Arch-Conspirator, is something rare and magnificent—a novella of epic voice and scale. Roth is a masterful conjurer, summoning both classic myth and visceral dystopia to weave a breathtaking tale of love, avarice, and the timeless desire for revenge.”—Ryka Aoki, bestselling author of Light From Uncommon Stars I’m not sure what I was expecting with Arch-Conspirator. As a teen fan of the Divergent stories, I was intrigued, even though I didn’t love Poster Girl. Find out my full thoughts on this dystopian meets Greek mythology release in this book review. Summary

Arch-Conspirator - Macmillan Arch-Conspirator - Macmillan

Antigone's parents – Oedipus and Jocasta – are dead. Passing into the Archive should be cause for celebration, but with her militant uncle Kreon rising to claim her father's vacant throne, all Antigone feels is rage. Somehow I didn't feel like I was making a choice. I felt like he already made all the choices, and I was the response to call, the effect of his cause."

The world-building elements and the way the book ended were great! In fact, I just wish the book was longer and more fleshed out because there was so much more Roth could have done with this world. I get that it's supposed to mirror the play which is pretty short, but it could have been a richer story IMO if this would have been a novel. The primary issue with Arch-Conspirator is that, while having inventive fun with the original tale, it seems like it is trying to do too much at once instead of exploring one theme really well. I love a retelling that really throws you for a loop, but I feel a total resetting of time and place to use the narrative as a modern political commentary was done much more effectively in Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie, which dealt with immigration and the Iraq war. I quite liked that we get to see conflicting opinions and perspectives that self-justify actions, though in Home Fire we spend much more time in these perspectives that allow them to be nuanced instead of such broad strokes as we have here. In this futuristic world(we don’t know the year but I guess that doesn’t matter) if you give birth naturally, your children won’t have a soul so people extract dead people’s DNA to make children. That’s inherently an interesting topic-designer babies. Once again, Roth isn’t really leaning into why that’s dangerous or beneficial. People just hate the naturally born people Roth is a masterful conjurer, summoning both classic myth and visceral dystopia to weave a breathtaking tale of love, avarice, and the timeless desire for revenge." - Ryka Aoki I think my main issues with the book were twofold. First, I just wish it had been expanded. Not in the way that the ending was - I love a good bittersweet and uncertain ending (and I can make up a happy ending in my head and no one can tell me otherwise!) I mostly want to know more about this world and understand more about Ichor and the Archives and just figure out how the world got to the way it was portrayed in the book. I want to know more about the system of government and the rebellions they kept mentioning and generally learn about the worldbuilding that the author started and gave us the barest hints of.