Yeah I mean its basically about some super hightech post scarcity future where humans have decided to genetically engineer (I think) all of their racial differences and to remove all sexual desire and prejudice, or something like that. And basically one kid every so often gets to like... psychically inherit all these memories of how the world used to be. Basically you're meant to feel like its awful to ruin the human condition this way, but long after I read it I clocked it as seeming very anti-communist, like this is what the foolish commies will do if they eradicate scarcity and whatnot. Its not very good, from a creative perspective I think it would've been better as a short story that was more sci-fi in nature.

Its definitely peddled to pretty young kids, and its written in a way as to be really ambiguous about the kind of ideology/society its criticizing. Theres definitely elements of fascism (racial purity), but the society portrayed is also essentially classless with some sort of big brother element that assigns everyone work and eradicates any form of dissent. Its just not a good book, really, but its also meant to be a somewhat edgy novel for very young people so I guess thats kinda normal.

Honestly I look back on a lot of the assigned reading from my youth and kinda resent being forced to read a lot of tripe. To be fair I was lucky to have a really advanced reading ability (I watched my brother play RPGs before I could read at all, and picked up a lot before I learned in school), so maybe I felt kinda put upon just not reading at whatever level I was at. I really dont mean this as a form of bragging, my experience with education just made me feel like sometimes the system assumes the least of kids when they're really capable and ready for a lot more.