50 Book Challenge: Book 5

It's been awhile blog.

The book I just finished was We by Yevgeny Zamyatin.

For those who don't know, We is the one of the original dystopian novels and it played a huge influence on George Orwell's 1984. I'd be lying if I said that I didn't love 1984 and that's the main reason I checked out this book.

Now that I've finished We, I noticed that a lot of the ideas and general plot points were almost a direct influence on Orwell's masterpiece. A society that seems perfect on the outside; male protagonist who believes the system to be great; meets a woman who shows him otherwise; he attempts to change what he believes and so on. I'm sure the book is more of a commentary of Russian culture in the early 1900's as opposed to being about 1940's Europe, but I guess that's to be expected.

The book did drag on at some points. I might have to re-read it somewhere down the line, maybe catch some subtleties that I missed the first time around. Overall, I really liked a lot of the ideas (like no one having an identity; all people are referred to as "Numbers" and a letter prefacing their number) but some of the execution bored me at times. I know it doesn't help that I got sick in the middle of reading the book so that probably affected the way I read it. Maybe I was just tired though, I don't know.