Love Minus Eighty, by Will McIntosh
published in June 2013 from Orbit
where I got it: received copy from the Publisher (Thanks Orbit!!)
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This review has exactly one spoiler. And the [spoiler] mentioned happens ...
Love Minus Eighty, by Will McIntosh
published in June 2013 from Orbit
where I got it: received copy from the Publisher (Thanks Orbit!!)
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
This review has exactly one spoiler. And the [spoiler] mentioned happens right at the beginning of the book, so I don’t feel too bad about it.
Insurance of the future has nothing to do with health, and everything to do with death. In the future, the wealthy pay for extended freezing insurance, to be cryogenically frozen at the time of death, ideally to be thawed out later when their family can afford it. Even for those without the monetary means, the idea of being buried in the ground is distasteful. Revival is big business, and one company has hit on a jackpot idea: allow wealthy patrons to speak with beautiful dead women at a dating center, and if a relationship develops, they can revive her and marry her. Sit down and think about that for a moment. It’s like a futuristic version of The Bachelor, only worse. The “bridesicles” are only awake, only alive, for a few minutes at a time. Like a speed dating system from hell, she has five minutes to convince whoever has awoken her to visit her again. Running the dating center isn’t cheap, wealthy patrons pay by the minute to speak with women who will do anything to stay awake, stay alive for just a few more seconds.
what would you do to stay awake, when awake is the only time you’re alive?
Love Minus Eighty is based on Will McIntosh’s short story, Bridesicle (listen to the audio, here). While there is some character overlap, the endings are very very different. If you’re already familiar with Bridesicle, you’ll recognize Mira, whose chapters alternate with everyone else’s. As might be obvious from the title, the story focuses on interpersonal relationships, often of the romantic variety.
Rob Mashita is living far beyond his means. Shacked up with wealthy socialite Lorelei, Rob has dreams of being a professional musician. Lorelei chooses a particularly vicious way of telling Rob that it’s just not working out between them. Hurt, confused, and just a teeny bit drunk he [spoiler] hits a young woman with his car, killing her [/spoiler].
Terrified and confused, Winter wakes up at the Cryomed Dating Center. She’s afraid to die for good, she doesn’t want to wake up just to flirt with dirty old men either. Being chosen for the Bridesicle program is advertised as an honor, as something only the most beautiful are chosen for. As Winter learns, it’s hell.
When Rob learns that the woman he killed, Winter, has been put into the Bridesicle program, he makes a vow to help her. Of the lower classes, and living in Manhattan’s Low Town, Rob barely has an up-to-date skintight system, let alone the funds to visit Winter. If she doesn’t get enough visits, if she isn’t profitable enough to Cryomed’s dating center, she’ll be removed from the system. She’ll be buried in the ground, and Rob will be a murderer.
Elsewhere, in High Town, Veronika and Nathan enjoy making fun of their clients together. We get a lot of the story from Veronika’s point of view, and she quickly became my favorite character, even though at first I wasn’t even sure if I liked her very much. Like Nathan, Veronika is a dating coach, helping people improve their online profiles to be more attractive, feeding them flirtatious and witty lines through a private messaging system. It might be the future, but dating still sucks.
Love Minus Eighty is about love and death, and the sides of ourselves we choose to show to others, and something that hooked me right away was the characters. They all have backstories, they all have goals and fears and dreams and insecurities. None of them want to compromise, or face their denial, or give up what they’ve worked so hard to achieve. For a not-romance, this book is painfully intimate. Don’t get hung up on the “romance” thing, this is angst and schmaltz free.
On top of the beautiful story and deeply developed characters, the