8.16.2024 | Friday

Golden State

category: Book Reviews
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Golden Statetitle: Golden State
author: Ben H. Winters
published: 22 Januaury 2019
publisher: Mulholland Books
genre(s): alternate reality, dystopian, sci fi
pages: 320
source: library
format: eBook
buy/shelve it: Amazon | B&N | BookBub | BookHype | Goodreads

rating: three-half-stars

the blurb

Lazlo Ratesic is 54, a 19-year veteran of the Speculative Service, from a family of law enforcement and in a strange alternate society that values law and truth above all else. This is how Laz must, by law, introduce himself, lest he fail to disclose his true purpose or nature, and by doing so, be guilty of a lie.
Laz is a resident of The Golden State, a nation resembling California, where like-minded Americans retreated after the erosion of truth and the spread of lies made public life, and governance, increasingly impossible. There, surrounded by the high walls of compulsory truth-telling, knowingly contradicting the truth--the Objectively So--is the greatest possible crime. Stopping those crimes, punishing them, is Laz's job. In its service, he is one of the few individuals permitted to harbor untruths--to "speculate" on what might have happened in the commission of a crime.
But the Golden State is far less a paradise than its name might suggest. To monitor, verify, and enforce the Objectively So requires a veritable panopticon of surveillance, recording, and record-keeping. And when those in control of the truth twist it for nefarious means, the Speculators may be the only ones with the power to fight back.


  • a few notes
  • review

content warning: ❗some graphic violence❗

POV: 3rd person
keywords/phrases: truth, conspiracy
tropes: good versus evil, Big Brother
spice: 0🔥
language: 🤬🤬🤬🤬

If 1984 and The Giver had a baby, I think it would have been this book. Maybe with a little The Handmaid’s Tale thrown in. The problem is that, while I loved The Giver and The Handmaid’s Tale, I hated 1984. And that left me feeling very mixed about this book.

The premise is great… a world in which truth is all-important, and anything less could get you exiled or worse. In itself, that is incredibly thought-provoking. The author has created a world that has shades of our own, making the possibilities seem that much more eerie. It is a Big Brother-esque world in which there is no escape. Citizens must record every detail of their lives, living every moment in rigid truth. Surveillance is a thing of normalcy, leaving little space for privacy. Books, TV, and movies are things of the past. The only viewing available are curated recordings of surveilled moments, shown to the masses. There’s even a bit of a science fiction element to be found in the Speculators, law enforcement officers who seem to have an otherworldly ability to sense lies. And, of course, there is the irony that’s always involved in dystopian worlds… that the very thing that is considered the detriment of society is still available to the elite.

This feels like a book I should have loved, but I just didn’t. The writing is good, the premise is good. But as the book went on, there were just too many moments in which the reader had to suspend their disbelief. There was such a departure, and so frequently, from the premise for some of the characters that it felt unbelievable. Nor did the constant “gotcha” moments help. Far too often, an event/situation/person would suddenly be revealed as something other than what was originally presented, with little to no real reason why. It felt utterly random, with little connection to the plot, without advancing it in any real way.

Another problem for me was the lack of backstory that felt necessary. From page 1, I wondered three things.

  1. What happened to make the world become what it is in this book.
  2. How the government/state was able to overpower human nature and eliminate free-thinking and subjectivity.

None of this was addressed at any point, which made it hard to suspend disbelief for much of the book. By the end, which seemingly came out of left field, there were just too many over-the-top moments.


About Ben H. Winters

Ben H. Winters is the author most recently of the novel The Quiet Boy (Mulholland/Little, Brown, 2021). He is also the author of the novel Golden State; the New York Times bestselling Underground Airlines; The Last Policeman and its two sequels; the horror novel Bedbugs; and several works for young readers. His first novel, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, was also a Times bestseller. Ben has won the Edgar Award for mystery writing, the Philip K. Dick award in science fiction, the Sidewise Award for alternate history, and France’s Grand Prix de L’Imaginaire.

Ben also writes for film and television. He is the creator and co-showrunner of Tracker, forthcoming on CBS. Previously he was a producer on the FX show Legion, and on the upcoming Apple TV+ drama Manhunt.

He has contributed short stories to many anthologies, as well as in magazines such as Lightspeed. He is the author of four “Audible Originals”– Stranger, Inside Jobs, Q&A, and Self Help — and several plays and musicals. His reviews appear frequently in the New York Times Book Review. Ben was born in Washington, D.C., grew up in Maryland, educated in St. Louis, and then grew up a bunch more, in various ways, in places like Chicago, New York, Cambridge, MA, and Indianapolis, IN. These days he lives in LA with his wife, three kids, and one large dog.

Rating Report
plot
three-stars
characters
three-half-stars
writing
four-stars
pacing
three-half-stars
Overall: three-half-stars

reading challenges:

  • 2024 Alphabet Soup Reading Challenge
  • 2024 Alphabet Soup: Author Edition Reading Challenge
  • 2024 Beat the Backlist Reading Challenge
  • 2024 Linz the Bookworm Reading Challenge
  • 2024 Monthly Motif Reading Challenge
  • 2024 PopSugar Reading Challenge
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