The Doubt Factory

...What we are left with is a suspenseful novel with occasionally very good characterization. It's a novel with an important message, one that, despite the mechanism being clear for anyone willing to connect the dots, doesn't get nearly enough attention. I enjoyed reading it but after finishing The Doubt Factory it still left me with the feeling that the novel made it too easy to dismiss it as a conspiracy theory. It's unfair to expect a work of fiction to come up with the answer to one of the major challenges facing American democracy but I would have liked to see it reach out a bit more, rather than just condemning shameful corporate behaviour. If simply exposing it would be the answer, we'd have solved a lot of problems by now. Still, it is a message that needs to be spread, and as such the novel is very much worth reading. Just be aware that you will never see a political statement or an article in the news quite the same way after you finish this book. The pattern Bacigalupi describes is everywhere.

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