{"id":1616,"date":"2024-01-10T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-31T21:41:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/?p=1616"},"modified":"2025-01-01T10:41:17","modified_gmt":"2024-12-31T21:41:17","slug":"the-seventh-son","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/2024\/01\/10\/the-seventh-son\/","title":{"rendered":"The Seventh Son"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><strong>Sebastien Faulks<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><em>Penguin Random House<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size\">Otago Daily Times, January 10th 2024<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">The villain of Sebastian Faulks\u2019 16<sup>th<\/sup> novel, Australian billionaire entrepreneur Lukas Parn, believes the development of self-awareness is what differentiated Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens: an evolutionary leap allowing us to make cathedrals and great art but also rendering us warlike and prone to psychosis and dementia.&nbsp; So, with suitably Technobro-messianism, Parn sets out to test his theory by covertly fertilising the ova of an IVF patient at one of his private clinics with a synthetically \u2013 generated Neanderthal sperm. The resulting child, Seth, is followed as he grows to adulthood to identify neurological and psychological differences from his fully-sapient peers, an experiment presumably destined to end in tragedy. I, however, can\u2019t tell you because I didn\u2019t make it that far.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Despite being described as \u201ca spectacular examination of what it is to be human\u201d, Faulk\u2019s turgid, pseudo-science-laden prose and two-dimensional characters left me cold. Seth doesn\u2019t see the point of art or anticipate the future, has a 6th sense for animals, is magnetically attractive to women, and generally fails to rise above the stereotypical \u2018noble savage\u2019. His fellow cast members are similarly flat and caricatured, and I didn\u2019t care enough about any of them to stay the distance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sebastien Faulks Penguin Random House Otago Daily Times, January 10th 2024 The villain of Sebastian Faulks\u2019 16th novel, Australian billionaire entrepreneur Lukas Parn, believes the development of self-awareness is what differentiated Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens: an evolutionary leap allowing us to make cathedrals and great art but also rendering us warlike and prone to psychosis [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[448,370,18,451,407],"class_list":["post-1616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-448","tag-fiction","tag-odt","tag-sebastien-faulks","tag-speculative-sci-fi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1616"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1617,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1616\/revisions\/1617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}