The Future

Naomi Alderman

★★★★☆

About the book

BOOK SUMMARY

As powerful tech billionaires prepare for the collapse of civilization, Martha Einkorn and survivalist Lai Zhen are drawn into a plot that could either save the world or help destroy it. The novel follows their efforts to challenge the enormous power of technology companies and the people who control them.

Published 2023

Dystopian

432 pages

Loved most of it, a few complaints

January 25, 2026

Hot take: this would have been a much better book if Zhen’s character had been completely excluded from the narrative. I realize that’s a big statement since she’s a pretty major character, but she was really only tangentially related to the primary storyline and I thought her chapters were distracting. I didn’t hate her, but there was already a LOT going on with the alternating viewpoints, Martha’s history, and the internet chats; I thought it was a mistake to throw Zhen in there as well. Especially because Martha and Zhen’s super sudden intimacy was an off-putting introduction to both characters.

That being said, there was so much I loved about this book. The overall plot is excellent. It covers an impressive amount of ground about the challenges of technology, wealth inequality, the environment, personal ambition, community, etc. etc. It certainly isn’t subtle in its messaging, but I don’t consider that to be a weakness.

I appreciated the characters. Especially after living in Silicon Valley myself, Zimri, Lenk, and Ellen all felt like completely recognizable characters. The way Martha, Selah, Badger, and Albert were able to come together and wield power felt about as realistic as it could have been, and I was impressed with detailed explanations of the plan the team put together. The entire world Alderman builds feels extremely real – not far from our own, but with some fully believable technological “advancements”.

I very much enjoyed the biblical story of Lot being told throughout as a comparison to our current circumstances. I also thought that the passages about Martha’s history and Enoch’s teachings were great. The whole book had a good amount of suspense throughout as I tried to piece together all the different elements of the story.

Ending with a couple other complaints in my reverse compliment sandwich: Timelines just around a bit without giving me any real sense of time. I had a hard time knowing what was happening when, or how much time had occurred between events. Also, the ending was so overly optimistic that it kind of crushed some of the realism of the rest of the book.