Book Review: The Employees by Olga Ravn (2022)


First, a synopsis from Amazon: "The Employees chronicles the fate of the Six-Thousand Ship. The human and humanoid crew members complain about their daily tasks in a series of staff reports and memos. When the ship takes on a number of strange objects from the planet New Discovery, the crew becomes strangely and deeply attached to them, even as tensions boil toward mutiny, especially among the humanoids." Apparently, this book had been shortlisted for several sci-fi book awards and honestly, I can't even begin to understand why. 

As stated in the book's synopsis, each chapter is a report/statement from an employee aboard the Six Thousand Ship to a corporate investigatory board concerning the attachment of the employees to 'objects' that are taken on the ship. What the objects are exactly is never stated. There is no particular character to root for. A murder mystery is teased but never properly addressed. There is no deep philosophical exploration (much less scientific exploration) of the employees feelings for the objects. Every chapter basically reads and feels the same. Some chapters are very short and utterly devoid of importance to the 'narrative.' If this is an experiment in writing, it completely  fails. 

I only managed to finish the book given it's remarkable brevity, and for that I'm thankful because otherwise I would have stopped reading it. 

Final Score: 1/10 (worst book I've read in a long time)

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