Arch-Conspirator

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Arch-Conspirator by Veronica Roth, the bestselling author of the Divergent series, is a dystopian sci-fi retelling of Antigone, an Athenian tragedy written by Sophocles in 441 BC. Nikias moved away from Kreon, no doubt sent on some small mission. My uncle’s eyes lifted to mine. He nodded in greeting. Part of the reason is there were too many POV characters. Antigone works well, first, because it is a play, and second because the audience is standing outside the action observing it. In Arch-Conspirator we are put into many first person POVs. We sometimes get POV chapters from a character just one or two times. That made it really hard to connect with any one character. Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher. This has not impacted my review which is unbiased and honest.) 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

Arch-Conspirator by Veronica Roth | The Book Review: Arch-Conspirator by Veronica Roth | The

In Arch-Conspirator, Veronica Roth retells the story of Antigone, now set in a futuristic, post-apocalyptic city that’s filled with the last remnants of humanity. These people now survive through gene editing and are under the strict rule of Kreon, Antigone’s uncle. But when Antigone’s brother tries to stand up to Kreon’s leadership and is killed, Antigone must make a choice about how she will choose to live her own life, and how she will honor those who came before her.

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.

Arch-Conspirator by Veronica Roth - BEFOREWEGOBLOG Review - Arch-Conspirator by Veronica Roth - BEFOREWEGOBLOG

Arch-Conspirator is a gut punch of a story. Roth takes everything fragile about love, everything powerful about certain doom, and blooms with it. You’ll be holding your breath until the very last word.”—Olivie Blake, New York Times bestselling author of The Atlas Six If you’ve read or seen the play, you’ll know to expect that the rebellion fomented by Antigone’s brother Polyneikes does not go well, and that it ends with him and her other brother, Eteocles, dead at each other’s hands. In Roth’s novella, Antigone’s uncle—Jocasta’s brother—Kreon decrees that Polyneikes’s ichor is not to be extracted, but permits their sister Ismene to extract Eteocles’s. Antigone, unbowed by her uncle and his threats, determines that she will extract Polyneikes’s ichor in defiance of Kreon, because she promised Polyneikes that she would do so—even though she does not believe in or want the immortality of the soul promised by the Archive. She enlists the help of Haemon, Kreon’s son and her betrothed, when he more or less volunteers himself, even though she has (ironically) distrusted him from the beginning due to his parentage. And, though there are some minor deviations from the path of destiny that is laid beneath her feet by Kreon’s inflexibility, the tagline on the novella’s cover—“Doomed from the start. All of us.”—is essentially accurate. It is a tragedy, after all. this book is trying to do too much. I felt like Roth got so excited about our shitty politics and wanted to write about it with a sci if slant but she didn’t know how to incorporate it.We spoke with 'Divergent' author Veronica Roth, whose latest book, 'Carve the Mark,' will be released worldwide in 33 languages on January Continue reading »

Arch-Conspirator - Macmillan

The Earth as we know it, is in ruins and only one city remains. Within its walls lies a building called the “Archive”, where genes of the dead are stored, to be used again in future reproduction. Antigone’s parents were murdered, their genes lost, and so now she and her siblings are doomed outcasts, unable to pass into the Archive when they die. With their father gone, their uncle Kreon sits in the throne, wielding his power on his family as much as on his countrymen. After the death of her brothers, Antigone is desperate and her final act of revolt leads her uncle to banish her, in lieu of execution. But Antigone is not alone, and Kreon is in for the fight of his life against everyone he thought he trusted. Seven houses crumbling on a Theban street. One’s got no fire, one’s got no heat. One’s got no water; one’s got no meat.’ I was having a difficult time working out both the SF elements and the Greek mythology. To figure out how much of their stories they follow and how much they even know of the mythology. It leaves Arch-Conspirator feeling a bit shallow considering the depths of each of these elements individually. The only thing that kept me going was being able to also switch to the audio-book with the dual narration from Dion Graham & January LaVoy. It gave this novella a personal gripping point for me to anchor the ’emotions’ of the story.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.