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Book Summary and Reviews of Love Minus Eighty by Will McIntosh

Love Minus Eighty by Will McIntosh

Love Minus Eighty

by Will McIntosh

  • Critics' Consensus (2):
  • Published:
  • Jun 2013, 432 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

In the future, love is complicated and death is not necessarily the end. Love Minus Eighty follows several interconnected people in a disquieting vision of romantic life in the century to come.

There's Rob, who accidentally kills a jogger, then sacrifices all to visit her in a cryogenic dating facility, seeking forgiveness but instead falling in love.

Veronika, a shy dating coach, finds herself coaching the very woman who is stealing the man she loves.

And Mira, a gay woman accidentally placed in a heterosexual dating center near its inception, desperately seeks a way to reunite with her frozen partner as the years pass.

In this daring and big-hearted novel based on the Hugo-winning short story, the lovelorn navigate a world in which technology has reached the outer limits of morality and romance.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"It's not clear why insurance covers freezing for centuries but not restoration, and the plot relies heavily on coincidence, but fans of "what if?" SF will enjoy this dystopian tale." - Publishers Weekly

"Starred Review. Intriguing, quirky, perversely charming and definitely affecting." - Kirkus Reviews

"Based on his 2010 Hugo-winning short story "Bridesicle," McIntosh's (Hitchers; Soft Apocalpyse) latest novel combines sf future tech with horror to craft a story that is both disturbing and hopeful as it questions the value of a life on borrowed time. The dystopic view of the future is both frightening and plausible, while the characters keep the story grounded in the details of human existence." - Library Journal

"An intriguing story that explores the meaning of what it is to be dead. Far from the usual 'occult' tale, this original and intelligent work well illustrates the complexity of the human soul." - Pat Whitaker

"How do we keep on connecting in our ever-growing maze of social technologies? How can love succeed in the techno-surround we've trapped ourselves in? These are the questions Will McIntosh explores in this tightly plotted tangle of love stories. The stirring result casts a clear and knowing eye on our current society, from the best viewpoint of all: the future." - New York Times bestselling author Kim Stanley Robinson

"Love Minus Eighty is a book that makes me envious as a writer: a clever premise, brilliantly executed. More importantly, though, it's a book that thrilled and delighted me as a reader, chilling and touching at the same time, a great story that stimulates the mind, the heart and the nerves." - Charles Yu, the author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

This information about Love Minus Eighty was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Will McIntosh

Will McIntosh is a Hugo award winner and Nebula finalist whose short stories have appeared in Asimov's(where he won the 2010 Reader's Award for short story), Strange Horizons, Interzone, and Science Fiction and Fantasy: Best of the Year, among others. His first novel, Soft Apocalypse, was released in 2011 from Night Shade Books, and his second novel,Hitchers, was released in February, 2012. In 2008 he became the father of twins.

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