I received a free copy of this ARC in exchange for an honest review

I am not a sci-fi fan but the description of Womb City intrigued me. The end result was more solid rather than satisfying ultimately. The tale of a woman put together by science conditionally until a grab for control is made, not an uplifting tale it is filled with abuse of every kind, and the world is sterile a problem with most sci-fi I find but it keeps your interest

First off, thank you Netgalley and the publishers for letting me read and review this book.

I went through a roller-coaster of emotions, through gasping through dialogue to clutching my pearls when Nelah was going through tough emotions. The way you want Nelah to just feel loved, worshipped and treated with respect, reflects on how women feel today in our modern world. You feel as if this is how society wishes and wants to place women in, these confined boxes in to mistreat and bend and break them. It gives a sad lens into a world not far from us.

However, I felt as if this book was trying to go for a lot of plot points, to a woman wanting freedom from her microchip to a murder mystery and ghost. I understand the story now after reading it, but still wishing stuck with "womb city" plot at the end without the ghost.

Still, a brilliant book and writing by Tlotlo, love to see their future works!

*Womb City* is a book that is a lot of things all in one. Initially steeping the reader in a futuristic dystopia veiled as a crime-free utopia and evolving into a sci-fi thriller full of escalating tension and shocking reveals. Nestled at its center are fantastical strokes of cultural folklore and spirituality. The book deals heavily with themes of bodily autonomy, sacrifice, and who bears the cost of “security”.


### World / Setting

*Womb City* takes place in a futuristic imagining of the city of Gaborone, Botswana. In the city—and seemingly around the world to some degree—lifespans are infinitely extendable through consciousness transfers to new bodies. However, in the process of transitioning to a new body, the person’s memories of their previous life are lost, giving them a clean slate but also an untethered start to life. Programs exist to help the person integrate into their new life, and the person can opt into integrating with the body’s existing family.

An AI monitors citizens and tests them for “criminality”. Citizens found likely to commit crimes are dealt with in various ways, most notably through forced extraction from their body. Bodies with a history of criminality are lower-value, as well as bodies that have disabilities or a history of other issues.

The commodification of bodies is sufficiently horrific in itself, but some bodies are also subjected to microchipping, which gives the AI systems direct access to the person’s vision, thoughts, and nervous system. Microchipped bodies are disproportionately female, and criminality is also disproportionately identified in female bodies, which subsequently means female bodies are heavily microchipped and policed, and frequently tested for “purity”.

All this surveillance buys the city a reportedly crime-free security, in which women don’t have to fear being victimized walking down the street at night. The irony, of course, is that they are victimized constantly by the very system that purports to provide that security.

### Characters

We follow Nelah, a microchipped woman who is a successful and award-winning architect, married to a high ranking official in the police force. Nelah is the third consciousness to inhabit her body, and is microchipped due to the previous consciousness committing an unspecified crime and being evicted from the body. Nelah struggles with infertility, having had several miscarriages and a recent stillbirth. She resents the body she was given for being flawed and unable to carry a pregnancy to term, as well as subjecting her to the lack of privacy that comes with constant AI “purity” exams of the microchip. Her husband, Elifasi, is a volatile asshole who is essentially the summation of all worst red flags of every r/relationships post.

There are no “pure” heroes in this story; it is filled with characters who are morally shades of grey, often self-interested and corrupt. I’m not sure having some hero in this world would make any sense, honestly, and the characters, while sometimes frustrating and somewhat offputting in some of their actions, are intentionally crafted and incredibly effective at leading the reader to the thematic questions of the text through their very existence in the world.

### Plot

The style of the plot evolves over the course of the book, sci-fi dystopia to sci-fi thriller to fantasy with a healthy dose of body horror. Events escalate from simple interrogation of this world, to a propulsive mystery-thriller uncovering corruption and nefarious characters at ever greater heights.

The blurb reveals that things kick off after Nelah hits a girl while driving intoxicated. Prior to this inciting event, the pace is fairly slow, an exploration of the traumas of living in Nelah’s body in this world and the fraught relationships she is involved in. It is often difficult to read and significant pagetime serves to set up many of the worldbuilding details which are then built upon as the pace picks up.

### Personal Thoughts

There’s a lot about this book that made me uncomfortable in the reading process, and I think that’s fully the intention of the text and it’s incredibly successful in achieving it. I struggled sometimes to engage with the theme of bodily autonomy taken to the extremes as it was here. The story rather explicitly asks the reader to question their perception of security, to inquire about the cost to achieve it and who pays that price.

While I don’t always dislike morally-gray characters, they aren’t necessarily my favorite, and sometimes the decisions these characters made frustrated me. In the context of this narrative though, the morally gray characters made me question my distaste and I think were very effective in proving the point that, there is no threshold of likability required or actions that a person can take that would make them “deserving” of the situation thrust upon them in this world. That said, one nitpick I had was in some of the characters doing rather surprising 180s in their attitudes that felt contrived to me.

The narrative escalates in pace and plot reveals significantly after the halfway point, and I found myself a bit disengaged due to reveal fatigue and the chaotic nature of the climax. I think a reader who enjoys thrillers or that feeling of layers being peeled back would likely enjoy this more than I did, as I tend to not be much of a thriller reader.

Overall, it was a emotionally intense read that left me thinking a lot about my reactions to the characters and events. It is well-crafted and written with engaging first-person POV.

### Recommended Audience

Readers who enjoy themes of bodily autonomy and a feminist lens into dystopia.

Readers who can get behind messy, morally-gray characters who are doing their best, not always for the right reasons but always with radical action.

Readers who like the thriller style of reveals upon reveals for a mind-bending and exciting conclusion.

Thank you NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book. This novel has so much potential; super interesting concept and world building and lots of gore. I was way more interested in the ghost's life than the MC who seemed to only be interested in defining her life around motherhood.
In the end it got bogged down with too much detail and repetition for me. There was definitely information that was repeated so often that I found myself going I know! when reading it for the third or fourth time.

I really, really wanted to love Womb City! I felt (and still feel) that the core message of this novel is timely, and it's a tale that needed to be told, especially as the world grapples with women losing agency over their bodies and patriarchy is becoming more unyielding, unpredictable, and insidious.

The plot/core message of Womb City is excellent. The execution could have been more enrapturing, concise, and enjoyable to read. For starters, Tlotlo Tsamaase packed in tons—TONS—of expository dialogue. This resulted in unnatural dialogue that reveals parts of the plot and scene instead of having these things naturally occur within the prose. The plot told in the exposition was sometimes page-long paragraphs, which were exhausting to read. Some of the intense, action-packed scenes were over-written, unnecessarily confusing bursts of scene with lots of repeated language that wasn't necessary to the scene because they didn't provide emphasis or increase the intensity of the moment.

Womb City was weird! Not because it was a Sci-Fi dystopian, but because it's well-written at times and intentionally convoluted at others. It hand-holds the reader through some of the most intense scenes by having characters tell you what's going on, what could go wrong, and what led to that moment. I almost DNFd this twice but pushed through because, again, I enjoyed the overall plot. I also loved that the novel was based in Botswana, as Africa is the origin of where bodies began to belong to others, and violence has never been eradicated.

Thank you to Erewhon Books, Kensington Books, and NetGalley for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

2⭐️s
.5 🌶️ (one scene of "spice" here is SA)

Pub Date: 1/23/24

final rating: 2.5/5 🤖

thank you to netgalley and kensington books for this arc.

i had high hopes for this book.

the blurb checked all the boxes:
sci-fi? check.
dystopia. check.
woman’s rights? check.

it had everything i was looking for. and at first, it had me hooked. the world building was great. nelah’s inner monologue was interesting. hook, line, and sinker.

but then everything went downhill. nelah became unlikable, at least to me, for spoiler reasons, and i found myself screaming at her in my head, “how could you be such an idiot!!! you’re literally proving to your government why you should be treated poorly.”

after that, my heart wasn’t in it. i began to hate nelah, and wasn’t even rooting for her anymore. she dug herself in this mess, so she has to deal with the consequences of her actions. period.

and tbh? a huge chunk of the book made no sense. i literally had no clue what was going on :( the end was good tho!! i’ll give it that.

tldr: cool vibes, not so cool MC.

If you’re a fan of African SFF, you won’t be a stranger to Tlotlo Tsamaase’s short fiction. Womb City is Tsamaase’s debut novel, a work of Afrosurrealist/Afrofuturist horror, set in a future Botswana where women are controlled by the state through microchips and … sorcery, and where you can extend your lifespan through body-hopping (that’s as wonderful as it sounds).

Readers experience this future through the life of Nelah, an architect who is married to an assistant commissioner of police. The couple’s been struggling with fertility issues; Nelah desperately wants a child, and they’ve run through most of their options. This, along with various other stresses in her life, sees Nelah eventually give in to a man who’s interested in her, and embarking on an affair. One night, high on all kinds of substances, Nelah and her lover commit a horrific crime that brings everything crashing down.

What makes this novel unforgettable are its horror elements. I didn’t think I would survive, but Tsamaase’s gift is to make you unable to look away, even from body horror (and there’s a TON in this novel. (Also, the undead.)). It is the point of all SF to make you listen, and Womb City explores feminist themes: women as walking wombs in patriarchal societies, women who “want it all”, and there’s even a really horrendous female patriarchal gatekeeper! Maybe my favourite character. Other themes: Black tax, families, and memory. Also really fun to know some of the places in the book. Also: that cover!!!

A really cracking way to start 2024 in African fiction. Thank you to Erewhon Books.

Unfortunately, another miss for me. 😭 Womb City had a lot of potential but it just didn’t deliver.

The sci-fi and speculative elements were super interesting — the ability to transpose consciousness into new bodies. I enjoyed the inclusion of Botswana folklore and the feminist slant.

Overall, the book read like it was still in a drafting stage. The world building and explanation of tech and the societal history tended to ramble. I frequently found myself unclear how things came about or worked.

While I love a book that centers around the struggles of a suppressed group, Womb City did too much telling as opposed to showing. It felt like too many points were shoved in our face and then clunkily force fed to us repeatedly.

Forewarning, this is a very adult book. The blood and gore are reminiscent of the Terminator or John wick and there is an underlying Bonnie and Clyde feel as well. The trigger warnings are numerous — there are too many to list — definitely best suited for adult readers.

Publication date: January 23, 2024 (DROPS IN TWO DAYS!)
Pages: 416

Thank you to @netgalley @kensingtonbooks and @erewhonbooks for the advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

I really wanted to like this book cause the premise was right up my alley. A sci-fi set in futuristic cyberpunk Botswana where consciousness can be transferred from one body to another, where death takes on a different meaning, and crime is nearly non-existent thanks to a predeterministic surveillance system.

Nelah, our protagonist, is a famed architect in a body that has had a criminal past and hence is microchipped. Despite her success and wealth, she's trapped in a loveless marriage where her husband can read her microchip to monitor her and she has to give regular AI assessments for possible future infringements. Being infertile, she longs for a child via expensive technology. She is wary of her family as she doesn't know the history of her body's previous host. Everything comes to a head when Nelah, drunk and drugged out with her lover crashes into someone at night and proceeds to kill and bury them to hide the crime. Which becomes a bigger nightmare when the ghost of said person starts haunting her and threatening to kill the ones she loves. But there are more secrets hidden by the people in power and the society that could change everything.

I wanted to like the protagonist. Sure, there are a lot of societal pressures and she's treated unfairly but she did still commit murder and chose to hide it instead of turning herself in and was also involved in adultery and dui. You can say that the events in the last third of the book explain why the hit-and-run occurred but it feels more like the author trying to absolve her of her sins. Nelah is a morally grey character but her lack of sufficient contrition for her mistakes and blaming others makes it hard to redeem her in my eyes. Her monologues about feminism and women's rights lose significance after some of her actions. Not to mention if you know you are being surveilled (and even if you aren't) and you have so much at risk, like your future child, why does she do risky things? Also, her repeated comments that her parents don't love her despite them taking in a stranger who reminds them of their dead daughter, loving her, educating her and providing for her wasn't enough. These kinds of family dynamics could've been explored deeper.

Womb City had some really timely and important themes of feminism, misogyny, ableism, immigration, racism, childcare and more but it felt like the topics were mashed together and lacked proper flow and ingenuity. We had a righteous protagonist but many times her actions and thoughts wouldn't align. Moremi on the other hand was a character that I liked a lot more. Throughout the book, she was someone who kept my interest and it's her actions that eventually drove the story forward and in many ways brought about the conclusion and societal justice. Jan, the lover, fluctuates as a character. It's hard to find him romantic when he pledges empty platitudes one moment but then emotionally manipulates her. Also, the author makes it seem like cheating is okay if the marriage is failing. Nelah did have the power and means to get out of the marriage and not have babies with him. These decisions felt contradictory to the book's message.

I liked the idea that the proclaimed crime-free utopia would still have provided outs for the wealthy and lead to rampant corruption and debt. And that the wealthy can access criminal records and switch into bodies of their choice while swindling others out of their own. I wish some of the consequences and scopes of this technology were explored better. There also seem to be some minor plotholes in the writing. The purple prose, despite having some passionate moments got tiring with the repetitions and random expositions, which were sometimes way too on the nose. It felt exhausting and buried the plot. The main concept of body-hopping and lifespans could've been explained more succinctly instead of scattering it over several chapters as and when needed. The overuse of hyphenated words was also something that personally irked me eg. barbie-cute, soul-mix, bone-fused, pain-screaming. Writing "I thumb-press the garage remote" instead of just 'pressed'.

Overall really interesting sci-fi dystopian concept coming from a Botswanian author that contains some crucial world issues but could've been presented in a better way

OMG. This book.
This book is beautiful and transgressive, infuriating and empowering. The prose is unique and welcoming, allowing the reader into a seemingly perfect world with small tensions and slowly blurs into a fever dream of just about every trigger (witnessed or mentioned), and then it truly gets weird. I absolutely loved this book!

What if A Handmaid’s Tale was written by Phillip K. Dick and adapted into a screenplay by Jordan Peele? That’s Womb City.

Set in a future Botswana where women are universally treated as criminals - even those who have achieved fame and fortune - whilst men enjoy a blameless society. Women are microchipped and live under constant surveillance, whilst men are have free rein, literally getting away with murder.

Meet Nelah, an award winning architect from a rich Botswanan family, enduring a loveless marriage with a high-ranking (and high rising) policeman husband. Their daughter is gestating in a high-tech facility as Nelah is unable to carry a child herself.

To escape her failing marriage, Nelah also has a lover. One evening whilst out on a drive with her lover, they accidentally hit a young woman. Terrified of the consequences in their dystopian/misogynistic society, they attempt to cover it up. Very soon she is haunted by the victim’s ghost who vows to hunt down Nelah’s loved ones in revenge, setting in motion a fight for survival to save those dear to her.

A highly enjoyable read with some great moments from sci-fi to horror to supernatural. The middle of the book did slip and so was a bit of struggle, but it soon picked up the pace again around 65% through.

Overall book is beautifully written with detailed and poetic descriptions of the world they inhabit. It has plenty of plot twists, and the pace certainly towards the end of the book makes it difficult to put down!

Thank you to NetGalley and Kensington Books/Erewhon Books for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The story in Womb City follows Nelah, a woman living in a futuristic surveillance state. As the story gains momentum, it accelerates at an almost breakneck speed with a large info dump of characters explaining things. The transition from a slower beginning to a rapid, intense middle of the book to climax could be disorienting for readers, and hinder their ability to fully immerse themselves in the intricacies of the plot. (Me!)

Despite the pacing concerns, Tsamaase crafts a dystopian world where bodies are government-issued commodities, exploring themes of power, monstrosity, and bodily autonomy. The commentary on how patriarchy manipulates women into unwittingly collaborating in their oppression adds a certainly timely theme.

Womb City tries to offer a fresh perspective on dystopian fiction, tackling relevant social issues with cultural sensibility. I only wish the author would have trimmed the story down a bit and not had quite so many things going on, and the pacing/story were a bit smoother. Thanks so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

WOMB CITY was alive with intrigue, creativity, and, as the description notes, "dark and deadly folklore." I LOVED this setting and uniqueness of this story. No author is doing was Tlotlo Tsamaase is doing right now in the realm of dystopian science fiction. I'd even go so far as to identify this book as having one foot in the horror genre, because that's how it felt reading it .... horrifying.

I was so excited to check this one out because the premise sounded so interesting and cool! I love dystopian novels. To me I found it a little hard to understand via the language and it felt like a lot of informational dumping- this doesn't mean other folks won't have an easier time reading it. I still think the story was interesting and the world building was very unique. I would still recommend this!

I dove into this book with high hopes – it's set in Botswana, and I'm all about feminist sci-fi, especially Afrofuturism. The premise? Intriguing! The beginning? Captivating! Unfortunately, this book missed the mark for me.

For starters, the comparison "The Handmaid’s Tale with Get Out" is completely false. It's a feminist Altered Carbon, and I think they avoided using that as a comp title to try and draw some distance.

I loved the beginning of the book. Following a young woman, my age, who is currently inhabiting a body that is microchipped: because of a crime committed by the body's last inhabitant, everything this body says or does is tracked by the government. Every year, she needs to go in for a review to see if she's pure enough for the chip to be removed, or if she's a criminal who needs to be evicted from the body. And since there aren't enough bodies to go around, the line between criminal and innocent is razor-thin. So far, I'm loving this. On top of this, the author has these incredible metaphors. Seriously, I've rarely seen such artistry in descriptive passages, I loved it. Just beautiful. Evocative. Raw.

But then... everything is just... conversational info dump. Characters are stuck in a loop of "Did you hear about the system?" Yes, we did, and we heard about it five pages ago too! Pages and pages of rehashing what we already know, to the point where I just wanted to scream GET ON WITH IT! Worse, details change in each retelling, making things incredibly confusing. And most of the system DOES NOT MAKE SENSE. At the very end of the novel, all the strange worldbuilding ends up having a... supernatural explanation, but for me, it didn't make up for the inconsistencies. It just made everything even more confusing.

When the narrative shifts to cover-up a crime, I hoped for a change in pace, but alas, the pattern continued. I appreciate the ambition and the unique setting, but the execution just didn't click with me. It felt like a rollercoaster that forgot to build the ups and downs.

So, while Womb City and I didn't quite gel, the initial allure and the author's skill with words were undeniable. Here's to hoping others find the magic in it that I couldn't quite grasp!

10/10. 5/5

Another unique dystopia scifi read with vibrant Afrofuturism vibes! If you found yourself watching Black Panther and were a fan of the general aesthetic of Wakanda but want to see that from a different angle in a darker story/world, this is the setting for you. But Womb City takes things a step further with it's high-concept of autonomy, child birth and rearing among a slew of others makes this story shine bright against the onslaught of dystopia scifi these days. The prose is lovely and i will purchase anything Tsamaase writes.

I loved this book from page one. The world and especially the society was so well done. The need to have your own body as your own as a woman and being able to make your own decisions about it was so well put together! Loved the literary fiction way of writing this. The horror stuff put me of a little as it was very sprung upon you and I just didn't click with it, but it gave the story another place to explore. Amazing debut!

I was originally so excited and intrigued with this but around 10% mark i found myself wanting to read less and less of this. I DNF’d this because of several reasons.

1. A lot of verbiage and terminology used were words that I’ve never heard of nor understood the context. A lot of words being terminology that was created for this world, so unfortunately i couldn’t look up the meaning.

2. A lot of info dumping especially when it came to soul swapping. Idk if i needed to store that info or not but it was going over my head and i felt like the author was telling more than describing.

3. This had a lot going on. lol

Great premise but with all these things going on i just can’t hold it together to read it.

Tlotlo Tsamaase's 'Womb City' is a striking journey into a dark and deadly future Botswana, weaving folklore with haunting speculative fiction elements. The narrative centres around Nelah, a figure of wealth and fame yet ensnared in a loveless, oppressive marriage. Her life spirals into a realm of horror and mystery after a hit-and-run incident, igniting a series of unsettling events.

The novel's concept is exceptional, marrying science fiction and horror with incisive social critique. However, I didn't click with Nelah, the central character. And while brimming with inventive sci-fi ideas, the book's worldbuilding sometimes creates a narrative with so many elements that I found it challenging. I would have preferred a more streamlined storyline, but that's easier said than done. Determining which elements to cut would be tricky.

Readers should be prepared for intense content - integral yet potentially challenging aspects of the story. 'Womb City' stands out for its thematic depth. Tsamaase's debut is bold and offers a unique and thought-provoking journey for those ready to delve into its complex narrative.

ARC copy provided by NetGalley.

I DNF'd at around 15%. I can't tell if I got a bad copy, but the formatting was nigh unreadable and skipped whole pages in places on my Kindle. Pages were out of order, or half-blank.

The novel itself felt jumpy, like it couldn't settle into its own shoes. A lot of slick worldbuilding and aesthetics, but not a lot of narrative drive, and the pacing felt like everyone's first time driving stick: jerking around. The concepts presented are fascinating, and I may try again once the book is published to see if editing shined it up a bit more than what was presented in the galley copy. It clearly has a lot of potential, and some of this may be a case of me not meshing with the author's style, which is fine, but overall I was disappointed with the quality of this book, especially with such a fascinating world.