The Synthetic Pleasure of The Hierarchies

I want the opening of every book to be a sharp hook. I want it to snag my navel and then drag me through next three-hundred pages, depositing me at The End, wobbly-legged and light-headed. The Hierarchies [Ros Anderson] mostly achieves this. For the experience alone it deserves five stars, which I usually only hand out for those rare gut-hook books. 

But, five stars or not, it wasn't perfect. 

Ideal for a book review blog, really... 

The Hierarchies is a near-future sci-fi novel. In it, 'pleasure doll' Sylv.ie is unboxed by her new 'husband' and adjusts to life in the attic of his family home. She's not the rubbery sex-doll you would imagine, but instead a human-passing, sexually athletic, trained mistress. She can talk current events, sports, politics, and can achieve every move in the Karma Sutra. She can cry (with the help of a reservior of water) and you can fill her scent module with any perfume you choose. She can dance. She can play chess. Her pussy even vibrates. 

Sylv.ie is essentially a live-in mistress, designed to occupy her 'Husband' for the odd hour, leaving his wife - 'the First Lady' - to raise their new baby in peace. She is bound by her programming, four simple rules called Hierarchies. They are a cross between a misogynist YouTuber and Isaac Asimov: satisfy your Husband, put the needs of him and his family above your own, obey every reasonable request, demand nothing in return... also... y'know... don't kill anyone. 

It's impossible not to like Sylv.ie, who is possessed of a Marilyn Monroe-esque quality: an intense internal sweetness with a spark of pure brilliance, so often reduced to her bodyparts. She is never too human, but she is also sceptical of the belief that there is some intangible difference that makes a born human a person and her a machine. She has basic programming that is altered by experience and learning - and so, at the end of the day, do humans.

[Please note, the rest of the review will mention some of the potentially triggering aspects of the book, including sex work and rape. Nothing will be discussed in detail, but proceed with caution.]

The problem is that this book says nothing about the issues it raises. I finished it wondering if I'd somehow missed some clever commentary on AI, sex work, feminism, virginity, women's bodies, childbirth, men, society... but no. In fact this book avoids those conversations. We come across protesters on multiple occasions, and yet the author shies away from them in the same way Sylv.ie does, leaving them chanting vaguely outside whatever gate Sylv.ie happens to be behind. Sometimes they throw a bottle or an egg.

I assumed that at some point Sylv.ie would meet them, but no. The author seems to have decided that in this situation, people would protest, so she's created some protesters. She's made them a bit TERFy and then seems to have brushed her hands and decided that her societal commentary is done and dusted. The author spends a lot of the book hiding behind the fact Sylv.ie can no longer access the internet and therefore doesn't know anything about the outside world. It screams of an author who doesn't want to deal with complexity.

At one point Sylv.ie is raped by an orderly while in hospital for an upgrade. While it highlights her twisted programming (upset on her Husband's behalf, sympathy for the inner sadness of her rapist) it's never mentioned again. It is the first sexual interaction which she is not designed for and therefore could be said not to consent to, and the author still has nothing to say. If you take away a strong opinion about any issues in this book, then it's because you've done all the heavy lifting. 

This book does suddenly shift about a third of the way through, which I was quite pleased about. The first third has the elements which I would personally define as 'non-traditional gothic' - a strange house that the heroine cannot escape, rules and situations that she doesn't understand, and limited information sources. Gaslighting is in full play too, as Sylv.ie discovers that she has lost over a year's worth of memories during an upgrade, and has left puzzling messages for herself.

The characters of her life - Husband and First Lady - are painted with a broad, stereotypical brush. Husband is a luxury-loving manchild who feels oppressed by his 'nagging' wife. Though his sexual appetite is enormous, his tastes are barely a step above vanilla - sexy nurses and strip chess. The First Lady is exhausted by her cheating husband and is clinging on to motherhood as her last successful mark of femininity. Even aspects of that are taken away from her: rich wives don't carry children and the baby arrives like a particularly fragile Amazon delivery.

We are saved from having to dig in to their no-doubt banal personalities when Sylv.ie flees and, surprisingly, doesn't look back. She stumbles into a whole new life - being found, auctioned, and sold to a brothel in a matter of twenty pages. It's here, surrounded by other dolls, that Sylv.ie really begins to grow into her humanity. She makes friends, enjoys the work and her small freedoms, and eventually falls for a Geisha doll, Cook.ie. I won't go too far into what happens next, as much of the book revolves around their sweet, fluttering love story, but the book isn't afraid to take things to a dark place. 

This is a book that is best experienced rather than engaged with. Just as you don't agonise over the intricacies of democracy vs. monarchy when watching Game of Thrones, this is a fascinating story that is timely in an age of sex-work and AI learning debates, but doesn't add to them. There are moments of horror, dystopia, romance... and a gentle brush of fingers on an arm that is sexier than any other act in the book