This is on the list of great dystopians like 1984 and Fahrenheit 451, so I've been meaning to read it for years. Right away, I wasn't that into it. The writing is so dull and unengaging that my mind kept wandering. I felt nothing for the characters. The premise also seems a bit... overblown? Maybe it's because we're like 3/4 of the way into our own boring dystopian society, but it seems a bit silly and like a ton of work to go through to set the society up this way in order to condition people. The sense I'm getting lately is that people might willingly give up thinking for themselves and buy into this lazy society where you're expected to do nothing, have a ton of orgies, and be rewarded with drugs. No need to spend years conditioning them. Also, setting up the world through the tour or whatever at the beginning seemed like a super lazy plot device. It's supposed to be "show," not "tell," right? I would have given it two stars based on this set up and plot alone.

And then why did there have to be Indians in it??! I get what he was trying to do. The dystopian "civilized" society is whack, and the savage native community is apparently the only "normal" place left. But the way the Indians were described over and over again as savages left an awful awful taste in my mouth. The way they were depicted was straight out of an old racist western. Super offensive and terrible. Especially as someone who grew up on the reservation. I get that this was written a million years ago, but it doesn't excuse this guy for being racist and offensive. Boooo.

Also, why isn't this talked about more? I didn't even know there were Indians in the book. It's not like Huck Finn where I had a ton of exposure to the racist content and context before I read it. You can't research Mark Twain without coming up with a ton of articles exploring whether it's racist or just "of its time." Also it's not like Huck Finn where the words were coming from the characters--here it seems to be coming from the author himself. And it's set in the future! There's not even a historical reason to add these depictions in if it's set in the future. The fact that this is/was taught in schools is so sad--it might be the first or only encounter with Native Americans that some people get!

I have no idea why people bothered to ban this book for "radical thought" reasons or whatever, when there's way better reasons to toss the book: it's boring and racist.