I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.  All opinions are my own. 

A man’s quest to create an artificial being to satisfy man’s greatest desires loses control of his creation in author Daisy Stardust’s “Mechanical Animals: Anatomy of Desire.”

The Synopsis

When I first began writing this book, I believed I was describing fiction. In time, I realised that I was describing reality – a surreal world of our own making.

Mechanical Animals is a dark story about a man who gives form to his deepest desires and gradually loses control of what he has created. In a world where work has become a privilege, art has almost vanished, and human beings are being replaced by humanoids, Eliot creates Lilith, an android designed to satisfy needs that people are ashamed to acknowledge even to themselves.

His creation soon ceases to be his alone. The boundaries between human and machine, love and addiction, dream and reality begin to dissolve. Every desire fulfilled gives rise to another, and a world intended to free humanity from suffering becomes a reflection of its fears, obsessions and drives.

This is a story of loneliness, desire, art and repression. Of a man who tried to create love, only to build its mechanical imitation.

THE REVIEW

This was a captivating and thrilling novel. The blend of psychological thriller and dystopian sci-fi elements makes the story feel weighty and consequential as the narrative progresses. The depth of world-building and character development was astonishing, as the narrative did a wonderful job exploring the protagonist’s mind and the chilling decisions that led to the book’s epic climax.

The character development was a solid foundation for the story. The overall themes the novel explored kept readers immersed in this world. Not only does the novel expertly explore mankind’s relationship to technology and how the continued push for artificial experiences can numb and deflate real human experiences, but it also allows for the exploration of love, loneliness, and the ways in which it is so easy for some people to blur the lines between the two and find themselves in an obsessive relationship. The toxicity that can often be born out of loneliness, and the harsh realities of a toxic mindset in the modern age about relationships and some people’s inability to get past a need for perfectionism in a partner, help inform a lot of the life-or-death consequences that the sci-fi elements of the plot bring to life.

THE VERDICT

Intense, thought-provoking, and engaging, psychological thriller meets dystopian sci-fi novel, author Daisy Stardust’s “Mechanical Animals: Anatomy of Desire” is a must-read novel that will fully immerse readers in a complex web of obsession and desire. On the heels of powerful hit stories and films such as this year‘s Obsession, exploring toxic relationships and oftentimes the ways in which people in general, but truly so many men, tend to become obsessive about the kind of person they want to be with in the destructive path that this can put them on, made this novel feel not only entertaining, but vital and important storytelling that is not to be missed. If you haven’t yet, please be sure to grab your copy today!

Rating: 10/10

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H9WZZL49

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