“The air over Jerusalem is saturated
with prayers and dreams
like the air over industrial cities.”
One of the things I'm grateful for in our book club is that it pushes me to explore other cultures as well as genres of books. However, I also cannot tell you how excited I am to read next month's book in my absolutely favorite genre!
And no wonder this book won the vote. It's an International best seller which has garnered countless awards & that's what a number of you noted as the deciding factor as to why you wanted to read this book. A couple of you even surprised me by saying that though this was a genre you usually avoided, the awards convinced you to try the book anyway which is wonderful.
Side note: The chosen book won by only the slimmest of margins: 8/100ths of a point as you can see in the voting results at the bottom of this post.
So which book are we reading in February?
An international multi-award winner, international bestseller & one of the few Israeli sci fi books in the world. NPR Best Book, Amazon Featured Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Book, Guardian Best SF & Fantasy Book, Longlist - British Science Fiction Award, Arthur C. Clarke Award nominee & World Fantasy Award
"A worldwide diaspora has left a quarter of a million people at the foot of a space station. Cultures collide in real life and virtual reality. The city is literally a weed, its growth left unchecked. Life is cheap, and data is cheaper.
When Boris Chong returns to Tel Aviv from Mars, much has changed. Boris’s ex-lover is raising a strangely familiar child who can tap into the datastream of a mind with the touch of a finger. His cousin is infatuated with a robotnik—a damaged cyborg soldier who might as well be begging for parts. His father is terminally-ill with a multigenerational mind-plague. And a hunted data-vampire has followed Boris to where she is forbidden to return.
Rising above them is Central Station, the interplanetary hub between all things: the constantly shifting Tel Aviv; a powerful virtual arena, and the space colonies where humanity has gone to escape the ravages of poverty and war. Everything is connected by the Others, powerful alien entities who, through the Conversation—a shifting, flowing stream of consciousness—are just the beginning of irrevocable change.
At Central Station, humans and machines continue to adapt, thrive...and even evolve."