The Bees in Overdue Podcast

Mar 05, 2017 Heather rated it really liked it

Shelves: read-2017

The book summary compares this to The Handmaid's Tale and The Hunger Games, for reasons I cannot imagine. I THINK they wanted to play it up as a dystopian, but... wouldn't all animal societies be classfied as dystopian if humans had to live in them? I think a better description would be Watership Down meets bees. Which is why I picked it up.
It's weird, in the way that Watership Down is weird. Flora 717 is born as a sanitation worker bee, the lowest of the bee castes in a hive. But she can do thi ...more

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Feb 26, 2016 Kate Sherrod rated it really liked it

Shelves: entomophilia

I read this whole book in one sitting (after a false start with it in February, while I was moving house). I rarely have that kind of focus nowadays, I've always got four or five books going at least. But The Bees was special, and not just because it's that golden rarity, fiction about insects. A more thorough review shall appear at Kate of Mind soon. ...more

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Jun 04, 2015 Kerry rated it really liked it · review of another edition

As a generalization, I don't care for fiction that anthropomorphizes characters. But I found myself rooting for little Flora. Born to a low caste, she has high aspirations.

Maybe she's heard the Jesus and Mary Chain song, Just Like Honey:

Listen to the girl
As she takes on half the world
Moving up and so alive
In her honey dripping beehive

...more

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Jul 22, 2018 Snem rated it it was ok

Shelves: strange-unusual

A novel about bees...ok...but there is a lot of depth in here. Made me think about hive mentality, sisterhood and freedom. I rooted for Flora 717 and there was good drama throughout. This is simply an odd little book, intriguing and informative...for a novel about bees.

I think this book is suffering from an identity crisis. Is it a science book? Is it a feminist dystopian yet also maybe romance? It was interesting conceptually but not enough to not keep me from hoping the end came soon.

I wasn’ ...more

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Oct 20, 2016 Samantha rated it really liked it

Really interesting and unique story. Like nothing I've ever read before. ...more

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May 19, 2015 Melanie Greene rated it liked it

The last few chapters grabbed me, but it was a long flight between Flora 717's first intimations that she could be The Chosen One (a la Harry Potter, Tris from Divergent, etc.) and the payoff at the end. Hive politics were more interesting than I'd have guessed; cult-y hive factions less so (though I liked all the different names used).

Paull's descriptions of flowers - especially scents - are enchanting. ...more

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