The Book of Flora
Written by Meg Elison
Narrated by Shakina Nayfack
4/5
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About this audiobook
In this Philip K. Dick Award–winning series, one woman’s unknowable destiny depends on a bold new step in human evolution.
In the wake of the apocalypse, Flora has come of age in a highly gendered post-plague society where females have become a precious, coveted, hunted, and endangered commodity. But Flora does not participate in the economy that trades in bodies. An anathema in a world that prizes procreation above all else, she is an outsider everywhere she goes, including the thriving all-female city of Shy.
Now navigating a blighted landscape, Flora, her friends, and a sullen young slave she adopts as her own child leave their oppressive pasts behind to find their place in the world. They seek refuge aboard a ship where gender is fluid, where the dynamic is uneasy, and where rumors flow of a bold new reproductive strategy.
When the promise of a miraculous hope for humanity’s future tears Flora’s makeshift family asunder, she must choose: protect the safe haven she’s built or risk everything to defy oppression, whatever its provenance.
Meg Elison
Meg Elison is a high school dropout and a graduate of UC Berkeley. Her debut novel, The Book of the Unnamed Midwife, won the 2014 Philip K. Dick Award. It was followed by The Book of Etta and The Book of Flora in Meg’s Road to Nowhere trilogy. The author lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and writes like she’s running out of time. For more information, visit www.megelison.com.
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Related to The Book of Flora
Titles in the series (3)
The Book of the Unnamed Midwife Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Book of Etta Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Book of Flora Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
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Reviews for The Book of Flora
83 ratings8 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5My second time reading this. The entire series is insanely good!
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5I really enjoyed the first 2 instalments of this trilogy but I didn't connect with the third in the same way. I found Flora's voice to be less authentic and the characters not as strong. At first I found the new storylines to be a little lazy and unbelievable, but by the end they got completely ridiculous.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I had no idea that this series was so queer educational and post apocalyptic all in one!
This book 3 was clearly a non-binary and Trans related work of fiction. They spoke of a very real life struggle for acceptance and questioning all of our gender roles far into a distant future. - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I have really mixed feelings about this book. I loved the choice of Flora as the narrator/POV; her voice and experiences are so different from those of Eddy or the Unnamed. And there are multiple trans characters! Which is especially great in this highly gendered post-apocalyptic society. But I hated the ending, and the way allusions to the ending were woven through the book really didn't work for me. Also, the resolution to the mystery of "frags" felt weirdly tacked on at the very end.Finally, the blurb on the back of the book was incredibly misleading -- I was promised "a ship where gender is fluid"! And some of the other stuff in the blurb also doesn't really fit the actual book.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This book, like the others in this series, is a brutal read. In this case, the brutality is less about explicit violence and more about the pain of loss (although violence is still definitely present, including non-explicit sexual violence). The themes from the past books dealing with the meaning and shape of community come into their fullness here, in beautiful, troubling, and complicated ways.
This is an excellent book, although I am a bit troubled that the one explicitly non-binary character becomes a warleader/mass murderer. These books have loads of lovely gender diversity, and lots of villains and heroes of varied genders, but that plot choice was an odd one.
I also have to wonder if this series is in some way an homage to Suzy McKee Charnas' Holdfast Chronicles. Between the frags and the horsewomen, plus the shared plot developments of postapocalyptic gendered violence and slavery, there are some potent parallels which would make for a very fun college seminar. - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Book of Flora is the third book in author Meg Elison’s post-apocalyptic series entitled ‘The Road to Nowhere’. This book continues the story of Flora, whom we met in the last book. Flora is trans-gender who identifies with being a female and often finds that she doesn’t fit in or isn’t accepted in many places. The author continues her exploration of male/female identification and sexual identities as Flora reminiscences about her life and how she came to the island of Bambritch and is now awaiting the arrival of an invading army. Overall this was my least favourite of the three books, I found there was less story and more emphasis on the author’s own exploration of fluid sexuality and reproduction issues. While some of this was very interesting, there was so much of this that the story suffered. My other problem with the book was the ending. What I expected to be a dramatic ending to this trilogy ended up falling flat and leaving the story unresolved and lacking a clear focus.Unfortunately, The Book of Flora was a weak ending to a trilogy that really started out with a bang. I would recommend that people read the first book, The Book of the Unnamed Midwife but as a stand alone and not bother with the other two books.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The final book in The Road to Nowhere trilogy, The Book of Flora starts where The Book of Etta leaves off--but Flora is the main character and narrator now. This book is not a linear story--there are two threads interwoven. One begins in Ommun. The other is about 40 years later. This storytelling style makes this book immediately feel different than the earlier two.While the earlier books touch on various communities having catamites, horsewomen (eunuchs I think), and lgbtq people, in this book the different genders and where they fit/belong are the focus. We meet a guevedoce (which I had to look up). All of these people just want to live somewhere where they can be accepted, comfortable, and safe. So characters go looking for a place where they will be happy, picking up others on the way, and leaving some behind. This is the point of all the traveling. Not for trading, not for salvaging. The larger world that in The Book of Etta was dangerous and worrying is now safe enough to go traveling for weeks on end with no set goal in mind? With women? Without enough supplies to trade for very long? This struck me as a continuity problem.Because of all the traveling (so much that it seems a bit unreasonable for so much to be by foot), Elison has to continue with her world building, since each community is so different. And some are very unbelievable--but mostly there are too many for her to do any single one justice. The entire story gets to be a bit over the top and fantasy-ish in the end. And I am not a fan of fantasy, it just goes a bit too far for my taste.————Thank you to NetGalley and 47North for providing me with an egalley of this book in exchange for an honest review.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Book of Flora is the 3rd and final book in The Road to Nowhere trilogy. My thanks to NetGalley for allowing me the opportunity to read this amazing conclusion. The book picks up where the second book "The Book of Etta" leaves off, deep below ground in the community known as Ommun. The story is told going back and forth in time between Flora writing in her diary from an island referred to as Bambritch (current) to flashbacks of her history and her journey that took her to Bambritch. In this book we learn much more about Etta/Eddy's history as well as Flora's history which I found both interesting and sometimes confusing. I say confusing because both of these characters share the same issue of gender identity. Etta was born a woman but thinks of herself as a man and Flora is a man who identifies as a woman. The stories of the two of them weave in and out so frequently sometimes it became confusing to figure out who was the person talking. But really maybe that was the point. It really wasn't important how they identified but about how they interacted with each other and those around them. A newer character in the book is someone referred to as Connie. Connie says she was born a girl but physically became male as he reached puberty. Again, the characters in the story referred to Connie as they or them so gender sort of fell to the background. In any case the book really tied up everyone's story in a very satisfactory way and I think really makes you think about how relationships are made no matter who you are.