Trigger warning: Body horror and suicidal ideation
I went back and forth on a rating for this one, but honestly I could not in good conscience give this more than 2 stars. It dragged painfully throughout the book. The body horror didn’t bother me that much, I thought that I had read other books that were more extreme than this one. Instead I just found myself getting bored. I think that this is an interesting subject due to that one billionaire who keeps claiming he’s grown younger (everytime I see that guy’s picture, his face freaks me out) but I wish that Cutter had actually gotten more into the ethics of this more. Instead it just kind of sort of ends and you either have one of two endings that may occur after the book closes. I have only read one other of Cutter’s works before this, The Troop, but I liked that way more than this.
The Dorians starts off with an elderly man named Frank who is about to commit medically assistance in dying gets a phone call that promises him something. We don’t know what it is, but then we have him transported by boat with another old man named Teddy who is suffering from Parkinson’s. The two men travel to a secluded island off the coast of Canada at a facility called Spindrift and meet four other people who are there for much the same reason. They are told that there is a way that they can reverse their ages and cure the diseases they are currently afflicted with. One of the potential subjects drops out and then we are left with Fank, Teddy, a man named Hugo, and two women named Claire and Maddy. All five of them are initially hesitant about going forward as test subjects, and doubly so when they are told that they can never leave. Instead, all agree, and find themselves the test subjects of a young prodigy, Doctor Astrid Marsh. Astrid has her own reasons for needing her medical test to work. Also on the island is Dr. Veronica Strauss, an ethicists, and two caretakers John and Moses. Things quickly go south after Astrid’s experiments work.
The Dorians are obviously a play on Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. You have a truly terrible main character who is handsome and does not age, but for every thing that he does, it is shown on a painting of himself that he hides away. I think that the issue here is that no one outside of two characters were truly terrible to begin with. Instead all of them turn that way. And I really wanted/wished that Cutter had actually pushed more into the ethics of aging backwards, the fact that these people would have to everyday do certain things to keep themselves alive/hale. Instead as another reviewer pointed out, it turned into a bunch of people having sex as soon as they could.
I wish I could say anyone was very well developed, but they were not. I think that since Cutter jumped around with so many POVs we didn’t really get a chance to know these characters. And I at least didn’t really care about any fates that befell any of them to boot. And the flow was just terrible after they all get to the island. I think that we spent a lot of time with the “science” of things and on wolves, etc. and it felt like the human beings were tertiary to things happening until they were not. And then once things go south, and it becomes every thing for itself, I just wish the book would hurry up and get to the ending. The ending as I said above just sort of gets there and then you can just imagine plot point A or B happening. I do think there is a larger point here that Cutter almost gets to, but does not. With the rise of many medical breakthroughs now and of course people who claim that they can reverse aging, is that ethical if it means that someone else or something else is going to pay the price?
- Refuge – sanctuary; a comfort read; a hideout needs more. Well the place the inhabitants stay is a refuge/sanctuary. It’s called that several times. Final square for full bingo blackout!
