Wouldn’t it be amazing if you didn’t have to worry about keyboards or devices to interface with the Internet? Just think about a search term and you have the answer, a map and it pops into your mind.

Representation: British-Nigerian MC, mixed race MC

A world where technology has gone a step further, and become part of our bodies through things called Pulses. These not only can monitor our bodies, they preserve all our memories with crystal clarity, and connect us with the world even more intensely than now, with augmented reality and the internet in our heads at all times. We follow Moremi, who got her Pulse much later than her classmates after begging her mom to allow it, and Orpheus, who was raised by his Neo-Luddite father on an island separated from civilization. He eventually gets pulled into London, and learns how to craft dreams with all the technology available. Moremi and Orpheus eventually become part of each other's lives and they just want a simple life together. However, there's bigger things happening that have long been in motion. The creators of the Pulse are pushing for the singularity, where all of humankind becomes one. The Revelators are pushing for a return to a more analog life, and will do big things to make that happen. Moremi and Orpheus are unable to escape the gravity well of their pasts.

Rating: 3.5/5 This is a retelling of Eurydice and Orpheus, and I love a good mythology retelling! I enjoyed my read of this, and it was a fascinating look into the potential future. We live in a time where there are active efforts to create a brain implant, so this is pretty close to home. It also makes me think of the book Feed, which came out in 2002, and I recently got a copy to reread. It'll be interesting to revisit that story and see what parallels there are. This book is definitely sci-fi, but it felt much more about the people and their relationships, how that's impacted by technology and their use of it. This speaks to our society today, and in some ways, a cautionary tale about what can happen if we're overly reliant on our tech. I will say overall, I enjoyed this book, but it could do with some editing down. For pacing reasons, for length, for repetition, but nothing that felt like drudgery.

When the sci-fi goes too deep into the technological I find it hard to keep immersed in the story, and this one does the opposite and goes deep into the layered question of technological progress: good or bad? There is more to it than the simple yes or no answer to that question and I found myself going back and forth on the answer as well which kept me very immersed in the actual character story outside of this. The otherside of the technology, the dreamtime sequence added a mystical side to the story as well that touched on my love for fantasy in way that was satisfying, and then some thriller cross-country chase at the end, it’s just hard not to find so much to love about this book.

An extremely interesting read. Perfect for readers who love dystopian fiction, or just scifi lovers or alternate history readers. I highly recommend this.

I couldn't help but get strong Black Mirror vibes from this enjoyable story where romance and science fiction take up equal portions of the narrative in well-crafted ways.

More perfect read almost dreamlike itself. The author's prose was so lovely. It almost felt gothic while being set in the future. A nice juxtaposition for the retelling of the tale.

This book is set in a future where people can get an implant that provides a convenient, vast array of social media. Of course, some people don't want it, but most think of it as not only convenient, but a great improvement.

Moremi is a ballet dancer, close to her sisters. She struggles with depression and self-worth issues. Orpheus grew up on an island, isolated from any tech. Both characters experience tragedy, and when their paths cross, they also experience overwhelming love.

This story didn't go the direction I expected, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. It was hard to tell what was right and wrong - is the implant really helpful, or evil? Temi Oh did a great job showing both sides.

I received a copy of this from NetGalley in return for an honest review.

Boy, where to start with this? I absolutely loved the beginning. It flipped back and forth between Moremi (a teen girl who is set on getting the Pulse, a tech that is basically a smart phone inside your head), and Orpheus (a teen boy whose father has hidden him away from society on a "neo-Luddite" island). If the book would have followed these two main characters as teens, I think I would have really enjoyed it. It was giving me throwback vibes to when YA dystopian books were all the rage in my teen years.

However, the author had multiple time skips that felt somewhat disjointed. On top of that, there were a few inconsistencies in the worldbuilding that left me confused. The Panopticon (the big bad in the is book) seemed to be all powerful, yet at one point they were unable to complete what seemed like it should be a fairly simple task. To me, it seemed like many things happened for mere plot conveniences rather than because they fit the plot. It definitely would not have bothered me nearly as much if this was marketed as a YA book, but it was an adult book that did not feel like it was written that way. The time skips also took me completely out of the story, and there were multiple. Overall, I would recommend it to YA audiences as it felt like it fit more in that market.

- MORE PERFECT is foreboding, tense, and fully engulfing. It's one of those books that had me feeling like I was swimming in the words and the world.
- This book uses the story of Orpheus and Eurydice as a loose structure, and to great effect. You know how it's going to end, and you find yourself hoping against hope that it will go differently.
- The discussions of technology in this book were fascinating, given how closely they match some of our current arguments about AI and automation. Everyone is a little bit right and a little bit wrong, and even the best parts get outweighed by the human need for power and control. I'll be thinking about some scenes for a long time.

The setting of this book was good and I liked the two main characters, even though I didn't get the symbolism of one of the names until practically the end of the novel. I think it spent a little too much time in dreams for me, but it picked up towards the last third or so of the book. Good descriptions of things like dancing.

It took me a while to process this one. I couldn't decide if it blew my mind or just short-circuited it, which is probably why I decided to give it a mid-rating. It's a very interesting and timely topic, with technology and a police state taking over people's lives after a tragedy, but it's also very long-winded in the way it's told.
It's a near future in which a device called The Pulse gets implanted into everyone's mind and people live connected to everything digital. Moremi dreams of being a dancer, but the trauma of surviving The Flood that devastated London and the loss of her mother to it have left her unable to live her life. Orpheus grew up on a remote island with no technology and his dad teaching him to survive without a Pulse, until his dad gets murdered by the people who make The Pulse, and Orpheus ends up a Dreammaker in the very company they were hiding from. Moremi and Orpheus meet and fall in love, or maybe get brainwashed by the after-effects of dreaming with The Pulse, and then things get ever more dire, violent, and dystopian.
It's an ever more complex web of connections, secrets, and others pushing their desires onto Orpheus to the point of breaking him. And pretty much every character has to make a thought decision at one time or another, always without really considering the point of view of others. Apt for the dystopian atmosphere, but rather bleak.
The parallels to where the world is actually heading made this a tough read because I can easily see the event of this book taking place. From a monolithic corporation with infinite power to a power-hungry government taking people's rights away for their safety and to fanatics believing so much that what they want is right for everyone, it's a smorgasbord of warning signs that hit too close to home.
The fact that it's verbose in the extreme and could have benefited from culling about 150 pages of unnecessary details and flowery language only makes it harder to enjoy.
All that said, it's a solid story and the parallels with the Greek myth are expertly woven in. It's just not the right book for me.

Confused thanks to NetGalley and Saga Press for the thought-provoking read!

This sci-fi book opens in a British near future where most humans have gotten a high-tech brain implant called Pulse that instantly connects them to a global internet named Panopticon and each other, including the ability to share visual memories. Loneliness has become a thing of the past. Crime basically eradicated with the brain tech including an algorithm that can detect future potential crimes, but it means that innocent people are getting arrested in advance. Pulse enables both the company creating it and the government unprecedented control over its users.

And, of course, this society has its version of Luddites who harbor deep suspicions about pernicious uses of the tech, have refused to get it, and have even retreated to form their own tech-free encampments in the wilderness. A movement is afoot by the government and the tech company to force everyone to get the brain plant, with the urgency of a pending vote and increasingly violent protests against it.

In telling the tale, Oh riffs on the classical Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, the story where Orpheus has a chance to lead his love Eurydice out of Hades but only if he resists looking back at her, which ultimately he cannot do, vanquishing Eurydice forever back to the god of the underworld. In Oh’s hands, the false dream state induced by Pulse becomes the labyrinth of the underworld from which in a role reversal the girl must rescue the boy.

Orpheus of the future has been raised in complete isolation on a remote sea island with his father who eschews all technology. Tight lipped about his past, Orpheus’s Dad teaches him survival skills and old-fashioned book driven learning. Until the day when troops come, Dad dies, and Orpheus gets taken prisoner by the government. They give him a brain implant against his will and infuse his mind with false memories of a more traditional, compliant childhood to the point that Orpheus struggles to separate his own memories from those served up to him in his dreams. He becomes a coder, specializing in the dream-state during which false memories get served up. This same dream state becomes used as a prison for potential criminals, entrapping them in an endless loop of false dreams.

Moremi has a conventional childhood, except for getting her Pulse a bit on the older side, and she dream only of becoming a professional ballet dancer. She also suffers from recurring depression She falls for Orpheus and wants to follow him to the ideal dreamscape he’s been coding. Their haunting romance drives the book forward.

Ultimately, Oh creates all-too-believable world in which technology goes amuck, and a corrupt government and greedy corporations have to be stopped in their tracks to save what ultimately makes us human.


Thanks to Gallery Books, Saga Press & NetGalley for an advanced reader’s copy.

An interesting, complex story with great characters, and an engaging plot.

Thanks very much for the free copy for review!!

After falling wholly in love with Temi Oh's first novel, Do You Dream of Terra-Two? , I was so excited to see that she had a new novel coming out! This one is definitely thought-provoking, and asks some really intriguing questions. I enjoyed quite a bit about this one, but also had a couple minor problems, so let's break that down! (Oh, and a disclaimer, the synopsis sells this as "Using the myth of Eurydice as a structure" and friends, that means nothing to me, so I can't comment on it.)

What I Enjoyed:

►The concept is so thought-provoking, and absolutely relevant. As we get closer and closer to having some junk implanted in our skulls, this sort of topic just seems to get more and more plausible, if not downright probable. Look, I don't want you in my head. I don't care what you ate for lunch, or whether your back hurts, or really anything about any of you enough to be in my actual brain. And you are lovely humans, and I am an extrovert and still I want your brains and my brain to be separate entities. Let's just say, I understand why there are large groups of people who find this unappealing.

►The characters are really well developed. We are given the chance to start the story in their younger years, so we understand what was motivating to them in the years prior to when the story takes place, understand their familial struggles, and how the ended up where they are in the present. That was really helpful in explaining their motivations going forward, and I definitely did come to care about them as characters.

►The story itself went some pretty cool places. Obviously, there is a lot of commentary one can explore when discussing things like brain implants. There's the very basic morality of it of course, but beyond that there are the rebels and the twists and turns and the billionaires involved, and the political component, and so yeah, there is a lot that can happen! I don't really want to tell you too much, because all of those things are the fun parts, the action parts.

►Writing was great. Just like her last book, I loved the writing in this one too. It just flowed well, and I like it, and I am looking forward to whatever the author does next.

What I Struggled With:

►It just didn't have to be 600 pages IMO. It didn't feel super long, which is a plus, but I often thought that some of the story could have been pared down a bit? It isn't overwhelming, so don't let the page count scare you off, but it is worth noting. I think if just a bit of extraneous stuff had been cut out (especially the dream stuff, I always have trouble getting invested in dream bits), it would have flowed better. And if I am being totally honest, I was a little underwhelmed with the ending? Maybe it was intentional to end it this way but (view spoiler).

►Holy instalove, Batman. I just didn't quite buy it, honestly. I get that it was especially in Moremi's personality to fall hard and fast, but I just didn't feel the chemistry. I think I would have believed it more that way, but it just didn't work for me. And since a lot of the book is built around the relationship between Moremi and Orpheus, it was kind of hard to overlook.

Bottom Line: Amazing concept and great characters, just a little long-winded at times.

I liked Do You Dream of Terra-Two? a bit better but this author is two for two with me on having written solid books. It’s a slow apocalypse setting and kind of a dark story so skip it if you’re not in a good place for that. But if you like near future science fiction this is a good one for you.

This near future sci-fi novel is stunning, immersive, believable, and wonderful. I love technology sci-fi with a big corporation, total adoption looming, some resistance to the tech, and a fight for humanity. More Perfect delivers all that and more.

The Pulse is a tech implant that changes the way people interact with their world and with others. It is social media, it is augmented reality, and it is how almost everyone communicates with their loved ones. Allowing you to stay in contact and share experiences. Without it, you’re not living the same life as everyone else. The novel begins with Moremi eagerly awaiting receiving her Pulse. Orpheus’s narrative begins on a remote island separated from all technology. How these stories unfold and entwine is told expertly by Oh.

Many sci-fi novels make up tech and immerse you more completely in a far off world, but More Perfect does a realistic job with modern references. It’s silly to believe all our modern things would disappear in the next 30 years, replaced by new brand labels. I get that the immersive spell of the novel is more complete without these references. It is like a record scratch reading about Polaroids, Ray Bans, and Beyonce songs. But it is more realistic for London 2050 to acknowledge that culture will still exist.

I loved this novel and Temi Oh does a beautiful job reimagining the Eurydice and Orpheus myth. This is a novel about love and family, home, and the future of society.

Intricate. If confined to a one word review intricate would be my choice. There are many threads in this story – social issues, politics, environment, mythology as well as human personalities. Temi Oh has woven these strands into a thoughtful and entertaining narrative that evades explanatory lectures. The characters can be as inconsistent as the rest of us making for unexpected plot turns. Yes, there were times when I wanted to say “Get on with it.” but even the few the slow parts can be seen to contribute to the whole. And that whole leaves a lot to be considered about the present. It’s all wrapped in a moving story that can stand on it's own.

In a dystopian world that somehow does not feel far off from the future, technology is an intrinsic part of everyday life. The Pulse is an implant that allows people to have constant social media access: filters over vision, messaging, news, and tracking etc. Technology has even started to creep into dreams- all in the name of helping people, of course! Moremi is a young girl when her life is changed by a horrific tragedy. As she and her sisters are forced to grow up too fast, Moremi clings to the feeling of wholeness and distraction offered by technology, but is unable to entirely conquer her darkest thoughts. When she meets a dreamer named Orpheus, the two of them must decide how far they will go to escape the manipulations of a technological society built to give power and control to the elite.

Temi Oh’s writing is clever and thought-provoking. Moremi (Eurydice) is a very complex and original character. Oh follows Moremi’s journey as a young girl and her life before tragedy, to Moremi’s insistence on getting the implant, and how these experiences affect her as an adult. Moremi is relatable as she struggles with mental health and wishes for any way, no matter how improbable, to undo the grief that she feels. Orpheus has a similarly nuanced childhood and is impacted by grief at a young age. The retelling of Orpheus and Eurydice is woven throughout the story and creates a sense of anticipation and dread, as most readers will likely be familiar with how that story ends. Readers will be unable to look away as Moremi and Orpheus attempt to keep themselves above water in a society built to work against them. I also particularly loved the relationship between Moremi and her sisters. Even though they all held different levels of comfort with technology and had very different opinions, they were always there to protect each other.

More Perfect is reminiscent of the movie Minority Report, where technology is used for dubious purposes in the name of safety for all. Oh raises compelling ethical questions and examines the way technology intersects with humanity and mental health. I really enjoyed how dreams were impacted by technology in this re-imagining of Eurydice. The way that Orpheus was able to design dreams and delve into the magic of others’ dreams was fascinating. Oh is clearly a sci-fi writer to watch as she creates vivid characters, complicated ethics, and unputdownable stories. I’m excited to see what she writes next!

Thank you so much to Temi Oh, Gallery Books, and Netgalley for a free ARC in exchange for an honest review.

For publisher: My review will be posted on Instagram, Goodreads, Amazon, Storygraph, and Barnes & Noble etc

Overall this was a really cool retelling that I got a bit lost in along the way. First, I have loved Greek Mythology since I was a kid so pair that with SciFi and that automatically is a win for me.

The concept of addressing loneliness with an implant that connects everyone was a super interesting perspective to me. I thought the characters were beautifully flawed and engaging. Where I struggled was a with the pacing. I was really engaged during the first and last part of the books but in the middle I was a bit lost. There were time jumps that I do not know I was always tracking until it was explicitly said. The neuroscience though, fascinating!

3/3.5 for me. Though I may reread this again in the future and will definitely pick up more from Temi Oh!

People have small implants that allow social media to exist as an augmented reality layer. The British government has now decided to step in citing public safety, veering into severe overreach.

More Perfect reimagines the Eurydice and Orpheus myth as it's set in a near-future London. One of our main characters is actually named Orpheus, and he's a young man who spent the first fourteen years of his life on an island with his father subsistence farming and avoiding technology. Kids were getting the Panopticon installed into their brains as young children, getting so used to the augmented reality overlay that an attack flooding London and knocking out power led them to panic. The Panopticon's parent company then creates a paramilitary branch to keep the peace within the city and through all of England; there is no more choosing whether to have a Panopticon or not, every citizen must have it installed, and it's used to invade thoughts and memories, induce dream topics, and track citizens at all times. This is an utterly chilling view of a potential future... And all of this within the first few chapters!

In the five years since the flood, Moremi isn't as focused on dance as she used to be due to financial issues and continued flashbacks of getting caught in the wave of water that flooded London. Orpheus had a period of addiction and working on building dreams, doing his best to bypass the Panopticon and drawing their attention because of it. His work is being used to help with trauma victims and mental illness, bringing their paths together. Of course, there's the benefit of using the Pulse in that way, but it also involves altering and deleting memories from the quartz memory embedded in it. There's also talk of melding minds, so that people become fused together with separate bodies, and the creation of a separate police force to arrest and detain people indefinitely if they're determined to potentially cause crime. In essence, it's a blend of Inception and Minority Report; I love those movies and seeing the concepts here, and it's devastating to see how it works in this possible future.

The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice plays a role here as well as the discussion about privacy, individuality, and what it is to be human. Sci-fi is wonderful for those kinds of questions, and I find myself seeing both the positives and negatives to the Pulse question in the novel. It's much how I see our current technology: it's a tool, and only as good as those that use it. The commercial aspect of course seems to drive the usage of any new technology, and that is mentioned here as well. It's taken to an extreme conclusion here, but that's what makes us question where social media and tech are going. Hopefully, enough of us will push to better humanity, not constrain it.