Customer Reviews

The Rag Doll Plagues

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I read this book in a graduate seminar and loved it. The book uses disease to connect 3 different time periods and three different men, and is set in Mexico. It is a dystopian novel, so it is not exactly "feel-good" but it IS well-written. For fans of sci-fi, Chicano/a literature or people interested in fictional representations of plagues, this is a great book that works on multiple levels. It has a strong element of metafiction, so literary scholars will love that. It also looks into the future (with robotic 'people'), and all the while it addresses historical racism against people of Mexican descent both in Mexico and in the U.S.

Morales overreaches himself here. His prose is awkward and at times tries to be so grandiose it becomes cheesy. It's not the gruesomeness of the story that bothers me as much as the rampant sexism and how he seems to purport not racial equality, but merely flipping the racial balance so natives rule. What kind of solution is that? Poor story, terrible message, incredibly bad writing.

Well it will stick in your head, but I am sure that is not a good thing.