Book Review | WOMB CITY by TLOTLO TSAMAASE

4 ⭐’s |  ARC Review | PUB DATE: 23 January 2024

Read if you're looking for:
- An afrofuturism & horror tale set in Botswana, by a Motswana author
- Themes of misogyny, colonialism, bodily autonomy, & wealth inequality
- Murderous ghosts
- Consciousness transfer between bodies
- A vengeful god
- A “good for her” ending

This is the debut novel from Tsamaase. It’s set in a near-future Botswana, where people can purchase a new body for their consciousness to be transferred into after their current lifetime runs its course. However, people do not retain the memories of their previous lifetimes. Additionally, some people, oftentimes criminals but also many women, have a microchip inserted into their nervous system that monitors them at all times and reports any possible crime or infraction they may commit. Our main character, Nelah, is chipped and being monitored by her police officer husband, all the while attempting to conceal an affair with a wealthy businessman. When Nelah and her lover commit an accidental crime, it sets off a dark series of events, uncovering corruption, nepotism, and nefarious plots, as well as setting a murderous ghost on their trail.

This book is very hard to define or describe without giving spoilers. It’s a genre mash-up that includes sci-fi, speculative & dystopian fiction, afrofuturism, fantasy, and horror. The writing really reminded me of Rosewater by Tade Thompson (which I loved), being eerie and unsettling, yet engrossing. Tsamaase is incredibly creative, bringing in so many new ideas and weaving them together with socio-political issues, including misogyny, colonialism, racism, surveillance by the government, bodily autonomy, & wealth inequality. This is where my main criticism comes in: there was so much going on that sometimes it was confusing or felt convoluted, particularly in the middle third of the book. However, Tsamaase pulled all the strings together by the end, with a satisfying ending. I also felt that the audiobook narrator, Christel Mutombo, did a great job. Although your mileage may vary, I had a great time with this book, and I would recommend it for readers who enjoy dystopian and speculative fiction, and other afrofuturistic stories, like those from Tade Thompson or Nnedi Okorafor.

CW: Misogyny, Body horror, Gore, Sexual assault, Trafficking, Miscarriage, Emotional abuse, Gun violence

NOTE: I received this audiobook for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

This book was a wild ride and I absolutely enjoyed every single bit of it. It covers so many topics so please check the trigger warnings before starting. The narration was so good. Some audiobooks you can listen to while you do other things, this is not one of them. While I did listen to this while at the gym and while working, my job is very repetitive. If you have to fully focus on something else while you’re listening to this audiobook, I don’t think you’ll get the best experience. It’s a lot of information and you have to pay attention or you will be confused. I saw that this was classified as horror and I didn’t see it until I realized that what is happening in this book is not that far removed from reality and that’s scary. I love already ordered the physical so that I can annotate it. There were so many moments in this book that I know that I’ll want to look back on.
Thank you so much to NetGalley for the advanced audiobook of this book.

Interesting ideas in a sci-fi Botswana that simultaneously intrigue and confuse.

Womb City tackles a relationship-heavy science fiction with a touch of horror and crime. Basically, it's a lot! Sometimes that's a great thing, with distinctly captivating ideas keeping the reader hooked. Sometimes the choices are less successful and the cohesion and comprehension slip away.

The story sets out to speak on many topics, including personhood, parenthood, bodily autonomy, political corruption, privilege, and misogyny. While the intention is good, there's not much here that's both new and coherent. Some of the concepts - like the effects of past lives lingering in the physical body rather than the mind, or the murder mist (?) - are thought provoking but underdeveloped and unconvincing.

Though I think more revision would have been helpful, there's something about this book that snags my attention. The mix of genres and focus means the story takes unexpected turns that are fun when you're in the mood to follow wherever it goes. The sci-fi setup is genuinely intriguing and feels very much like a big budget movie I'd expect to see advertised as a summer blockbuster.

The narration by Christel Mutombo is well done and makes the audiobook a good choice for reading the book.

2/5 Stars

I really wanted to enjoy this book for what it was, which was a creative and daring dystopian story exploring women’s rights to their bodies. I ended up just finding it so hard to get into, the story really felt like it was dragging and the exploration of themes felt heavy-handed and not nuanced. Some parts of the book get really redeeming and unique, the setting was something completely new for my and the premise was pretty intriguing, but I found the execution a bit lacking.

First of all, the premise, title, cover art and narrator are all amazing.

I enjoyed the first 20% of this and was excited to see where it would go but somewhere along the way I wasn't so excited anymore. There was so much going on and so many plot points and explanations that I just couldn't keep up and had no idea what was going on by the ending.

Thanks to Netgalley I was able to have this book before release, and I'm pleased to say I really loved it, like I love all the books by Tlotlo Tsamaase.
I loved Nelah, the protagonist, so much, and the themes are definitely the ones that interested me the most.
The author uses sci-fi to talk about problems we face in our everyday world, and she does that with such a dreamlike writing style that makes me so fascinated, that I had to devour the entire book in a day.
The worldbuilding kind of reminded me of 1984 a little bit, and the political subplot is the most intriguing I've read in years.
I'm gonna think about this book and its messages for a long time, I think, because it's one of those books that go under your skin and change the way you think of things, and also the way you are.
I would totally recommend this yo everyone I know!

beautiful writing, intricate world building. very captivating story premise. would highly recommend for scifi fans.

This book grabbed my attention immediately. It's such a beautiful idea for a story; a dystopian future, where people live longer by body swapping. The author writes very poetically and has a great imagination.

That being said, I believe that this story went a bit off course. I had trouble being inside the main character's mind for so long while he wavered about. She was a strong character and may have been better viewed from 3rd person so that when you got annoyed you were able to step away from her. Jan, her love interest in the book was hard for me to believe. Tlotlo wrote a dark patriarchal story filled with male dominance, and yet his character bent at every whim of the FMC.

I wanted to like this book a lot more than I did, and I held through to the finish line so I could see where the author was going. I believe that the story would have been more powerful, had it been shorter, more to the point, and focused. The author has a lot of potential, and I will watch to see where her writing evolves after this journey.

Thank you Netgalley and Erewhon Books for the opportunity to read this ARC on kindle as well as audio.

DNF @ 45%

The premise is so promising, and Tsamaase is clearly a talented writer, but the plot is just so clunky.

Not a spoiler since it’s in the description, but Nelah literally kills someone and then immediately points out that she’ll be punished for the crime “because she’s a woman.” I’m not sure if we’re supposed to view her as a complicated character or a hypocrite, but it didn’t work for me.

The world building is also just Nelah… explaining how the world works, in essay form.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

A free-fall into a super intense dystopian future full of incredibly invasive government surveillance, body hopping, and almost no crime! Right? Nelah’s consciousness was uploaded to a body with a past of crime and a microchip that records her every move through her eyes and ears, oh yeah, and her cop husband looks thru the footage weekly to ensure her “purity.” This is a truly lyrical and macabre look at being a disabled woman who lacks any real privacy in the eyes of the world and her government. After an accident, shit really hits the fan for Nelah and Jan as they spiral to come up with solutions to both the accident and subsequent haunting from the victim. The power of growth and change and feminine rage made this a super powerful read to me! And the narrator was amazing! Captured so much emotion and intensity thru the whole book. Definitely gained a top spot in my list of sci-fi faves!

This review is for the audiobook version of Tlotlo Tsamaase’s “Womb City, narrated by the fantastic Christel Mutumbo. Thank you to NetGalley for providing the audiobook.

Womb City is a brilliant audiobook that forces the listener to delve into the genuine horror of inequality, domestic abuse, and the battle for fundamental human rights and dignity set in the distant future.

The narration by Christel Mutumbo is superb in every way possible. I highly recommend this genre-bending tale accompanied by stellar audio narration. 5 out of 5 stars.

Unfortunately, this may have arrived to me at just the wrong time or something, or perhaps not.

I sadly found the main character to be incredibly unlikable. So even with her living in and through trauma, there isn’t necessarily enough for me to grab onto to care.

With that being said, it left the story feeling like it was really missing something, and in that sense, it read as sadly boring.

Womb City is a cyber-punk story of a future society where women’s bodies are owned and controlled by the government. It shows how women are often pitted against each other by society. It's a smart, body-hopping ghost story about motherhood, memory, and a woman’s right to her own body.

I really enjoyed this audiobook. Something tells me I may not have been fully engaged if I had read it though. It’s a bit long and not at all linear, but the audiobook conveyed the deep emotional impact of the story quite well.

As a debut sci-fi fantasy novel, it’s top notch.

*Thanks to @NetGalley and @rbmedia for the arc opportunity.

I ended up DNFing this one. The start was very slow and I wasn't interested in the characters. I thought the world building was super interesting and I wish there had been more of that to start, but it felt more technical than fun. I think my biggest sticking point that was it seemed to lack a narrative drive. The concept of your husband looking through your memories each day is engaging, but the FMC was able to hide things very easily and had a whole secret life, which was confusing. I could have pushed through, but ultimately there wasn't enough to keep me engaged.

2.5★

Womb City by Tlotlo Tsamaase is a dystopian, sci-fi, horror novel with women fighting for their rights and great LGBTQ+ and BIPOC representation.
There is secret government control, AI, body horror, and a lot of macabre thing which sound amazing (please check trigger warning before reading)...
HOWEVER, the plot was so complex it was quite confusing and at times incoherent. There were too many things thrown in that could have been left out and would have made the story more concrete.
The beginning was slow and a little struggling to get through. If it wasn't for it as an audiobook, I'm not quite I would have finished. But once I got about halfway through it was a roller coaster ride. A confusing, fast, but still fun roller coaster ride.
Womb city lacked the horror aspect until about the last half and it went from 0 to 100 real fast. I honestly wish there was more horror because it was so good.
This book is dark, and I highly enjoyed that part.
The ending was a "holy shit" moment, good or bad I'm not sure. But entertaining nevertheless.
The narrator did a great job as well.
Thank you Netgalley and RB Media for this audiobook for an honest review.

Maybe 4.5 stars. I was leaning toward 5 stars through the majority of the book, but I think ultimately it's just a little to scattered to get that full 5-star rating. I really did like this and I appreciate its ambitiousness. It went harder on the body horror than I was expecting, but honestly I feel that it helped bolster the message of the novel. Its tropes were well utilized. It threw some twists and turns that felt shocking but well earned. I will definitely be interested to read more books from Tsamaase in the future.

I rushed to get an ARC as soon as I read the premise but this is nothing like what I could've expected. It's not truly sci-fi but more like an attempt at literary fiction with a sci-fantasy background. It tries to be deep with it's exploration of society, norms, inequality etc but everything is so on the nose. It felt less like an analysis of human nature and more like the obvious being shoved down my throat. I don't recommend this to sci-fi readers, but if you'd like to dip your toes into the unfairness of womanhood (in Africa). The atrocities of mankind are more palatable in a fictional setting.

Womb City by Tlotlo Tsamaase: I’m still not sure how I feel about the text but I’m here for the concept (if that makes any sense).

The content, ideas, and underlying messages are really cool (it gives a little Black Mirror) but if you’re not into wordy, metaphorical texts, this might be a difficult one to get through. Keep in mind, as a reader I don’t love world building and metaphors. I am a tell don’t show kind of reader, the opposite of most book lovers.

2.5/5

I almost DNFed this book and I am still quite torn on how I feel about it. The second half was definitely better than the first, but there are issues that stem from that weaker beginning and some that were present throughout that made finishing the story a mixed-feelings kind of affair.

I was mostly drawn to the story by the sci-fi and horror tags. The comparison to "The Handmaid's Tale" is quite accurate topically but unfortunately "Womb City" needs polish. Most of the horror elements are present in the second part of the book - and pretty good once you get to them. But if you’re a reader looking specifically for this kind of content, you may get discouraged before you reach it.

One of the prevalent issues is that a little too much is explained in an encyclopaedic way, as if I was reading the author's notes for the world-building for where the story takes place rather than the story itself. As an avid sci-fi reader, I am excited about new ideas about possible dystopian futures but I want to also be immersed in them, not read a detached essay on them - and at moments it felt as such. Then, when we reached the plot twists and some of the most compelling reveals, I feel like not enough was said. I don’t mind vagueness of the horrors we encounter, but here, with so many things explained in detail earlier, it felt unsatisfactory to get less on the juiciest parts of the lore.

I feel like this book would benefit from "kill your darlings" approach. There are too many ideas - the criticism of misogyny, racism, police brutality, immigration issues, rich privilege, and more. All that sprinkled with the pondering on the true meaning of identity and consciousness, what makes us who we are. I am someone who's eager to breach such topics, otherwise I wouldn't be interested in this title in the first place. However, here it seems more like a dumping ground for ideas rather than a polished concept. There's so much mentioned, but too rarely anything offering insightful commentary stemming from it.

My biggest issue, I think, is that the author made me dislike all of the main cast in the first part of the novel, to a point where I stopped caring what happens to them. I don’t mind unlikable characters in general, don’t get me wrong, but here I know I should have been emphasising with some of these characters later on when the plot twists were revealed about the true nature of this world’s wrongdoings. But, unfortunately, at that point I couldn’t find any positive feelings towards the main cast. While I could relate to Nelah’s struggles as a woman, I couldn’t find it in myself to cheer her on after being in her head.

I can't say anything bad about the production of the audiobook, I enjoyed the narrator. I really do appreciate the choice of a POC narrator as I felt that the Botswanian names were correctly pronounced.

Overall, I'm disappointed since I really looked forward to a black, female, dystopian sci-fi story to sweep me off my feet but “Womb City” wasn't it for me. I think it could be more engaging with more brutal editing and the overall focus shifted onto the post-accident plot.

Womb City by Tlotlo Tsamaase is definitely a very unique story. This is a sci-fi/horror/dystopian novel. Very interesting and intriguing premise. I liked this book well enough.
From the very beginning the story was very slow and I couldn't get into it. But from the middle the pace became very fast, and even faster at the end. I feel like I didn't have enough time to enjoy it.
Also, if someone is looking for a horror story, it only starts in the middle and then goes downhill.
The author brought up so many topics in his story that I think it would have been better if at least a few of them had been selected to continue to focus on them.
The main character Nelah was somehow inconsistent, her behavior was confusing. Perhaps this probably was the intention of the author. Theres so very little about world building. There are many events which happen so fast that there is no time to experience emotions.
Lots of trigger warnings to be aware of!
3.5 star rounded up.
Thanks to NetGalley for providing the audio book.