{"id":3011,"date":"2023-10-19T15:00:57","date_gmt":"2023-10-19T14:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/?p=3011"},"modified":"2023-10-19T15:01:57","modified_gmt":"2023-10-19T14:01:57","slug":"review-the-seventh-son-by-sebastian-faulks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/review-the-seventh-son-by-sebastian-faulks\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: The Seventh Son, by Sebastian Faulks"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Sebastian Faulks is a brilliant writer.  His First World War novel <em>Birdsong<\/em> might even be a masterpiece.  But his most recent book is, sadly, a dud.  It&#8217;s a near-future science fiction story full of cliches (imagine a future world that uses high-speed &#8216;loops&#8217; rather than air travel, or cars that &#8212; brace yourself &#8212; drive themselves, or even a world where hardly anyone eats meat).  Enough of these are planted throughout the book to remind you that it&#8217;s set in the future.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The core story is about a couple going through IVF treatment at the hands of a secretive tech billionaire genius who decides to swap the father&#8217;s sperm sample for the DNA of a Neanderthal.  The resulting child grows up to be an American president &#8230; no, that&#8217;s not in this story but it would have made a more interesting one.  I read until the end hoping for some kind of surprise or twist or what used to be called &#8220;plot&#8221; and couldn&#8217;t find anything.  Not recommended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sebastian Faulks is a brilliant writer. His First World War novel Birdsong might even be a masterpiece. But his most recent book is, sadly, a dud. It&#8217;s a near-future science fiction story full of cliches&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3012,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3011"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3011\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3014,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3011\/revisions\/3014"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}