Arch-Conspirator

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I also feel like it would've given us more space and time to truly connect to the characters, especially Antigone, her sister, and her betrothed, which would've made the final ending even more hard-hitting. 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. In this way the people are told souls are reincarnated—Antigone finds this dubious though it is her brothers final wishes to have his soul collected, something Kreon denies him due to his “traitorous” demise—and pregnancies conceived through intercourse without gene editing are considered unnatural and create humans that lack souls.

Arch-Conspirator by Veronica Roth - Fantastic Fiction Arch-Conspirator by Veronica Roth - Fantastic Fiction

On the one hand, I don’t think an Antigone retelling needs much extra padding; you want to hit that sweet spot where you let knowledge of the source material fill in any gaps, and any overwriting may in fact get in the way and prompt unnecessary questions.I love reading retellings from lesser known stories, there are so many from all the ‘popular’ fairytales and I think we use more from other stories. I really enjoyed Antigone by Sophocles when I read it in college, so it took very little convincing for me to read this novella. Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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

Not gonna lie, I probably should’ve been paying more attention in high school when my Lit class did Antigone, but hey, apparently enough got through. I had difficulty sifting through all the elements of Greek mythos and science fiction to make a cohesive story. IMO, it would have been better to take a third person perspective on the story, focus a bit more on the sci fi aspects of the world-building and on just one or two key themes.Veronica Roth is the New York Times bestselling author of Chosen Ones, the short story collection The End and Other Beginnings, the Divergent series, and the Carve the Mark duology. But the rather hollow victory that Kreon has, also laced with sorrow and pain, lends a decent amount of complexity to the situation. He was in the casual version of his uniform, pants tucked into boots, shirt tucked into pants, forehead dotted with sweat, the morning sun already applying pressure. This novella blends heavy science fiction dystopia – think reproductive control and consciousness – with Greek mythology.

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

Antigone and her siblings are considered soulless abominations — their parents conceived them naturally, rather than going through genetic manipulation to achieve best results. All three women were quite unique in their backstories, their current situations, and their view of their own futures which was a great start but that was it, a great start. The now deceased Oedipus and Jocasta had their children this way, and so Antigone and her family are not only marked by their parents radical past but considered soulless vessels (Oedipus was a radical who believed ‘ Immortality…should be for everyone’ and made the soul collection available to all).Though, as his son Haemon comments, ‘ You don’t want to allow a crack in your wall—but the crack is already there, and I fear this will widen it. Like I said earlier, the last couple chapters almost made me tear up because of the conversations between the sisters and I'm a huge sucker for that kind of thing. I enjoyed these conversations the best, especially when the characters are arguing as it shows the situation is much more nuanced than it seems. It was interesting to see her blend this sci-fi setting of a broken world with Antigone, and I really liked how it ended up working together.