People have small implants that allow social media to exist as an augmented reality layer. The British government has now decided to step in citing public safety, veering into severe overreach.

More Perfect reimagines the Eurydice and Orpheus myth as it's set in a near-future London. One of our main characters is actually named Orpheus, and he's a young man who spent the first fourteen years of his life on an island with his father subsistence farming and avoiding technology. Kids were getting the Panopticon installed into their brains as young children, getting so used to the augmented reality overlay that an attack flooding London and knocking out power led them to panic. The Panopticon's parent company then creates a paramilitary branch to keep the peace within the city and through all of England; there is no more choosing whether to have a Panopticon or not, every citizen must have it installed, and it's used to invade thoughts and memories, induce dream topics, and track citizens at all times. This is an utterly chilling view of a potential future... And all of this within the first few chapters!

In the five years since the flood, Moremi isn't as focused on dance as she used to be due to financial issues and continued flashbacks of getting caught in the wave of water that flooded London. Orpheus had a period of addiction and working on building dreams, doing his best to bypass the Panopticon and drawing their attention because of it. His work is being used to help with trauma victims and mental illness, bringing their paths together. Of course, there's the benefit of using the Pulse in that way, but it also involves altering and deleting memories from the quartz memory embedded in it. There's also talk of melding minds, so that people become fused together with separate bodies, and the creation of a separate police force to arrest and detain people indefinitely if they're determined to potentially cause crime. In essence, it's a blend of Inception and Minority Report; I love those movies and seeing the concepts here, and it's devastating to see how it works in this possible future.

The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice plays a role here as well as the discussion about privacy, individuality, and what it is to be human. Sci-fi is wonderful for those kinds of questions, and I find myself seeing both the positives and negatives to the Pulse question in the novel. It's much how I see our current technology: it's a tool, and only as good as those that use it. The commercial aspect of course seems to drive the usage of any new technology, and that is mentioned here as well. It's taken to an extreme conclusion here, but that's what makes us question where social media and tech are going. Hopefully, enough of us will push to better humanity, not constrain it.

More Perfect is an incredibly inventive and thought-provoking sci-fi set in a dystopian world where the reality of the world turns upside down. I was fascinated by the premise and loved exploring this world where people receive implants that basically keep them connected to the internet and the rest of the world 24/7. There are plenty of pros and cons to this and I really enjoyed Temi Oh's exploration of this concept. The first half of this book was really gripping, but I have to admit that some of my interest wavered a bit as Moremi and Orpheus's storylines lines connected and we started to focus more on their own relationship. This felt a bit disconnected from the rest of the book and I honestly found that I didn't care as much about it as other aspects of the story. That being said, I still really enjoyed this book and Temi Oh's writing. I will definitely be looking for more from Oh in the future! Highly recommended to any sci-fi/dystopian fans that don't mind a longer read.

I really different angle for a dystopian world where technology threatens to make humanity unrecognizable. The author does a fantastic job showing both sides of the story and yet still keep the narrative focused on the love story between the two main characters. Thoroughly enjoyable!!

I loved the story, the world building and meeting the different characters. I felt completely immersed in the story and couldn't stop reading it.

4.3 rounded down (i've got my own rating system ok)

Quick shout-out: More Perfect a stand-alone novel, which is nice because I don't have the emotional capacity to wait for more sequels!! Now to the review:

I absolutely devoured this book, and I think it would reward a second reading. Temi Oh's neuroscience background is evident in the writing. A lot of dystopia fic that I've read recently suffers from what I call the Far-Away problem - where the world and circumstances seem so distant that they don't quite alarm you, whether that's in the inconceivability of their tech or in casting humans as evil at heart.
With More Perfect, Oh avoid sthis problem, crafting a near-future world that feels close to ours in ways both prosaic and magical. Whether that's in humanity's complacency - with surveillance tech, climate change - in our drive to create art and find beauty in everything, even in the small petty disagreements we continue to have despite everything designed to limit conflict. The world Of More Perfect is a world that is unfolding right now.

Retelling the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice, Oh throws in little easter eggs for fans of Greek mythology.
Where Temi Oh really shines is in depicting Moremi and her relationship to her family and her sisters. I loved that she was a dancer, something about the physicality, strength and femininity of of being a dancer sets her apart from most women leads in SFF. It also grounds her character, in a plugged-in society where nearly everyone is nudged to forego the experience of being in their body, a dancer finding herself through her body feels refreshing. I would have liked it if Oh fleshed out Orpheus a bit more, in retrospect maybe the hollowness of his character adds to the mythological tragedy of it all.

There are a few places where I think Oh could have delved into the technology and explored those aspects of world building. It feels like a lot was cut to serve the story that Oh seems to want to tell - about duty, love and the muddy ethics of technological invention.

All in all, I will be thinking of the questions Oh raised in this novel for days, and definitely recommend it.

I wanted to like this one more than I did. The first 25% had me enthralled. A near future where most people get an implant to pretty much have a computer in their brain? What could go wrong? Then it veers off to the two main characters and all of their issues (let’s be honest, there are a lot). I wanted more plot development and the story moving forward, not the introspections of two wildly flawed people.

If you’ve been paying attention to media at all lately, you might be thinking a lot about A.I., social media, and how freakishly accessible the internet makes people nowadays. I am an extremely online person, always have been, and even I am starting to rethink just how much I share with the digital world. In Temi Oh’s More Perfect, her first novel since 2019’s fan favorite Do You Dream of Terra-Two?, the internet is directly implanted into the brain, connecting people to The Pulse, or the Panopticon. It stores your memories and allows you to watch the memories of others, it allows you access to all the world’s information, connects you to others without the need for physical speech, and more. Moremi is a young teenager who has just gotten the implant and finds herself thrilled by the possibilities—but when a massive flood destroys London, she is unable to find her Pulse-less mother despite all the other information in her head. Orpheus is a young boy when we meet him (you guessed it, we ARE in a retelling), living with his father on a remote island where they are disconnected and hiding from the authorities—but is captured and forced to have the Pulse implanted. More Perfect is a deeply character-driven dystopia that explores memory, connection, and controlling the narrative, with vibes sort of like V for Vendetta mixed with Inception.

On the surface, "More Perfect" by "Temi Oh" is an adventure tale that focuses deeply on cool futuristic neuro-computational technology that enables access to the world's knowledge in realtime. However, this book is so much more than a simple adventure, or even feel-good piece about cool technology. While this story does a great job of demonstrating the fantastically awesome potential of this technology, it simultaneously shows how easily the same technology can result in a hell on Earth. After all, it is reasonable to assume that technology that gives its users universal view into the world, also gives universal view from the world into the user, and can certainly be misused. This story draws the reader into questioning their beliefs and thus learning about themselves in the process. This was absolutely a thought provoking book. After a brief recuperation period to come to grips with the darker parts of this cautionary yet technology encouraging novel, I look forward to reading more by Temi Oh.

I thank Gallery Books and Temi Oh for kindly providing a temporary electronic review copy of this work.

Ya conocía a Temi Oh, la autora de More Perfect por su novela Do you Dream of Terra Two?, aunque en esta ocasión nos ofrece una novela de futuro muy cercano y sin necesidad de moverse de la Tierra.


La acción está situada en el Reino Unido y gira alrededor de las posibilidades de un implante cerebral capaz de registrar todo lo que pasa por la mente de los implantados a la vez que aumenta sus capacidades. En principio se podría pensar que el invento es una panacea, pero si algo nos ha enseñado la ciencia ficción es que cualquier avance se puede utilizar de forma errónea, más aún si está en manos del gobierno. Y es que More Perfect es, entre otras cosas, una crítica aguda en contra de la vigilancia que tanto el gobierno como las grandes empresas llevan a cabo del ciudadano medio, exponiendo con toda crudeza cómo hemos vendido nuestra intimidad a cambio de migajas.

Temi Oh narra su historia desde dos puntos de vista, el de Moremi y el de Orpheus. Mientras que Moremi es una joven que está planteándose realizarse el implante del Pulse (el equipamiento del que hablábamos antes), Orpheus ha nacido fuera del sistema, criado por un padre que se resiste a la vigilancia constante. El contraste entre ambos puntos de vista es bastante extremo, pero no por ello deja de tener interés ninguno de las dos narraciones.

Sería bastante difícil estar hablando de una novela distópica si no hubiera un detonante para la aceptación masiva del Pulse, que en este caso resulta ser un atentado terrorista de consecuencias dramáticas para toda la población de Londres. Es un recurso muy utilizado porque es muy realista, la rebaja de libertades en busca de una seguridad que no es tal, bajo la protección de papá Estado. Esta amenaza pasada y las posibles amenazas futuras se convierten de este modo en uno de los hilos conductores de la novela.

El otro pilar fundamental de More Perfect es el mundo onírico en el que se pueden sumergir los usuarios de Pulse para enfrentarse a sus traumas e ir minimizando sus consecuencias psicológicas. El tiempo pasa de una manera distinta en este otro universo, pero no por ello deja de tener consecuencias en el mundo real. Me gusta esta dualidad entre lo que se vive en la realidad y lo que se vive en la simulación, porque es bastante creíble el poder de seducción que puede tener un lugar que alisa las aristas de la vida real.

Por lo demás, la novela tiene también su pizca de acción e incluso de romance, dando lugar a una mezcla perfecta de ciencia ficción de futuro cercano muy recomendable.

"A reimagining of the Greek myth of Eurydice and Orpheus, for fans of Becky Chambers and William Gibson by Alex Award-winning author Temi Oh. Using the myth of Eurydice as a structure, this riveting science fiction novel is set in a near-future London where it has become popular for folks to have a small implant that allows one access to a more robust social media experience directly as an augmented reality. However, the British government has taken oversight of this access to an extreme, slowly tilting towards a dystopian overreach, all in the name of safety."

The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice seems rife for a William Gibson-esque retelling.

Come for the Greek mythology Easter eggs and stay for the “Minority Report, “Dollhouse,” and “Upload” vibes. I loved this story of the search for eternal community in a world obsessed with connectivity but lost to the pulse of technological overreach. I was rooting for Orpheus and Moremi, moved by their struggles and triumphs. I highly recommend this new sci-fi novel from Temi Oh.

Well-written, dystopian story about the lure of technology and the ease of government control. An utterly modernized (through technology unimaginable when the story first appeared) Eurydice story. Someone to watch.

Temi Oh is the author of "Do You Dream of Terra Two?" More Perfect is described as a reimagining of the Greek myth of Eurydice and Orpheus,

It's a near future London wear most of the population has a small brain implant called the Pulse. that allows unfettered access to social media and integrated AI. Future crimes can be predicted and the British government begins to lock down in the name of safety. Orpheus and Moremi are two very different people who become orphaned and join to fight against the government. Fun dystopia, great take on Eurydice. #MorePerfect #TemiOh
.#Gallerybooks

A sad and introspective look at a thrilling world where technology and corporations force their way into the human brain. Two orphans fight for the right to own their own thoughts and dreams in a world sinking toward fear.