book review: the 716
Image: The 716 by S.J. Pratt
Olivia is destined to be the future leader of Meliora. She’s smart, rich, and innovative, and she has a pink Identifeye light.
Andy is destined to be a waiter and househusband. His blue Identifeye light prevents him from pursuing his dream of becoming an engineer. After all, who ever heard of a male engineer?
But when Andy’s life becomes entangled with Olivia’s and he gets the chance to prove himself on the female stage, everything starts to change.
In a society where men are second-class citizens and only binary gender norms are acceptable, Andy and Olivia must confront their own beliefs and decide what kind of world they want to live in.
Will they do what is expected or what is right? And will the wrong choice spell disaster?
‘… the 716 is more than a person. It’s an idea.’
The 716 is a gender-swapped, dystopic sci-fi set in the future world of Meliora, following Olivia and Andy on the first steps of their coming-of-age journey. Meliora is ruled by women; men’s choices are limited, their behaviour observed and controlled, their characters and actions the source of public discussion by strangers. Olivia moves through this world with ease, the daughter of its ruler, though she inwardly struggles with her desire to escape her mother’s expectations and become an engineer. Andy struggles against the systems and structures that repress him, hungry for knowledge and experience, striving towards the same impossible dream as Olivia, with far less resources and freedom to achieve it.
S.J. Pratt’s debut is swiftly-paced and tightly written, full of poignant observations and wry humour; the prose gave me serious Jasper Fforde and Douglas Adams vibes. Olivia and Andy are relatable, fully-realised characters, easy to empathise with and cheer for, and their gender-swapped coming-of-age journey serves to highlight the inequalities embedded in the structures of our own world, and emphasise how difficult they can be to both acknowledge and escape. Their relationship is sweet, natural, and real, full of ups and downs and misunderstandings, and both characters grow throughout the novel, giving a thorough base for further character growth in the novel’s sequels.
A lovely aspect of this novel are all the small details: pink as a power colour; anger as a ‘masculine’ emotion, and therefore a negative one; the everyday assumptions that affect women in the real world, and are flipped in Meliora to keep men in their place (assumptions about behaviour, capabilities, their bodies, their desires). It’s sometimes uncomfortable (but it’s meant to be), and always deeply relatable. I especially enjoyed RAY, Andy’s robot friend and the eventual reveal of the title meaning; as a non-STEM person, I also loved (and was fascinated by) the casual inclusion of engineering knowledge and processes.
If you enjoy sci-fi coming-of-age adventures with dystopian themes and a strong message of social and gender equity, then this is the perfect novel for you.
Strengths:
Clear, flowing prose peppered with observations that will make you stop and go ‘Oh, yeah!’;
Relatable, real characters;
An intriguing future world with dystopian undertones;
Small details that add layers of depth to the narrative;
First in series, meaning more to come!
One sentence summary:
A swiftly-paced, coming-of-age adventure set in an intriguing futuristic world, delivering a complex critique of contemporary power structures and gender roles.