Synopsis:
The hateful Path, that of the 9th Born.
The survival of the Ark—humanity’s last bastion after God’s wrath destroyed the world—is balanced by birth order: the oddborn are assigned a Path, the evenborn are given over to the will of God. And it is upon those of the 9th Born Path to sanitize the evens.
John 59129’s first walk as a Niner is the same day the scientists of the Ark plan to defy God by seeking to turn back time. An electrical surge sends John past the safety of the Ark, into an unblemished world. A glimpse of perfection. Of all the evenborn saved.
But when John wakes, he’s back in the Ark, twenty years after the failure to harness time. Was his encounter real or just a dream caused by his accident? Are those in charge of the Ark keeping the oddborn caged? Is God the monster, or is it mankind?
For John 59129 to find out before his own child is born, he must be willing to play the odds.
Review:
First of all, this is a tour de force novella. Mind-bending, thoughtful, lyrical. Desperate characters in an absolutely horrific dystopian world run by unfeeling zealots. However, there’s a hopeful touch that I absolutely needed. It’s bleak, it’s grim, but it’s also the opposite of those things.
John 59129’s life is all planned out for him. He walked the 9th path, meaning he must “sanitize” even born children. I’ll let you figure out exactly what that is. After a freak accident of timey-wimeyness, John finds himself sent 20 years into the future. He still walks the 9th path–now with a wife and a child on the way–but in the aforementioned timey-wimeyness, he sees a different path: one where oddborn and evenborns coexist together, where the Toppers don’t rule over the Ark with an iron fist. Complications ensue and John is a sent on a winding path toward either freedom or death.
Adams is a brilliant writer; that must be said first. He has an amazing command of the English language. Sometimes, like in his novel, The Godsblood Tragedy, he went a bit overboard with his expansive vocabulary. However, in Unlucky Evens, Cursed Odds, Adams keeps things poetic while also writing in a style that leans more to the succinct.
The world is also lovingly created, full of clever nods to numbers–they are all odds and evens, after all–and an amazing scene where we see the justice system on the Ark: playing the odds. In general, I’m a bit burnt out on dystopian settings, as I feel like most of them have been done before, but this one feels new, not just a rehashing of previous dystopian stories. I liked the worldbuilding quite a bit, but this is a novel about characters. John, who struggles between duty and choices that would be morally right but against everything he’s been raised to believe. There are some heartfelt moments between John and his wife, and it can’t be understated how much Adam smakes you feel in this short little book–less than 100 pages. By the end, you’ve been put through the emotional ringer, but you’ll be happy about it.
However, for all its darkness, there’s hope in these pages. Adams has talked about how this novella was a passion project as he and his wife navigated an IVF pregnancy and all the stresses involved with that. As someone going through IVF currently with my wife, that part of the novella really connected with me. There’s such an impermanence to life, so many unknowns that can happen, and Adams recreates the feel masterfully here.
If you’re on the lookout for a novella that will hit you in the feels while also giving you characters to root for a touch of hope, this is the book for you!
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