New Book Alert: Kutri by Blake Rudman; On Danger, Beauty, and The Future of Reality Programming
By Julie Sara Porter
Bookworm Reviews
Spoilers: Between Dark Beauty and his latest work, Kutri, Blake Rudman knows that there can be danger found in great beauty. His previous book, Dark Beauty, was a psychological thriller about a pair of beautiful twin models turned actresses who take their rivalry to fatal proportions. Kutri shows a future in which women exist solely as objects of beauty by men who use a declining population as an excuse to dominate and control women.
In the future, a Slow Plague killed off millions of women and girls world wide severely depleting the future populations. Females are now a rare commodity and marriage is considered so highly desirable that the Powers That Be created a reality show (figures).called Good Breeding. Good Breeding’s premise is that women are recruited from all over the world selected for their appearance, intelligence, background, ethnicity, and anything to make them desirable to their future grooms. They are selected in a process that reeks more of a sleazy beauty pageant than any promise of eternal love and personal commitment.
Trouble begins when matchmaker Jakob Freeman recruits Kutri Chandigarh, who was selected because she is one of the few remaining female Punjabi around and matching race and ethnicities is very important. (Chandigarh is not even her surname. It was the place where she was found.) She seems really good on paper, so good that Jakob falls in love with her and vice versa.
Like most good science fiction dystopian writers, Rudman crafted interesting details about a world that is in decline. Women in this universe are treated as valuable rare commodities like gold or oil. They are put on pedestals and valued specifically for what they bring to marriage and breeding. Their appearance and abilities to bear children are their only means of collateral. While claiming to respect women to the point that crimes against women are punishable by death or dismemberment, this male dominated society objectifies women by depriving them of freedom or choice in their own destinies.
Jakob works for The Studio, the real power in what used to be Los Angeles. What studio? It never says. More than likely in this day and age of studios merging and buying each other, it's quite possible that by Kutri’s time, they simply became one gigantic media and entertainment corporation.
In a government controlled by corporations in Kutri's world, is it any surprise that the one that openly controls California is an entertainment conglomerate? It is they who feature the Good Breeding series and they who decide which marriages will be arranged and how the population will grow under its tight rule. When entertainment and the arts becomes propaganda to promote the government instead of the channels in which to satirize, challenge, mock, argue against, or even question that same government, it loses its bite and becomes a means of control. It becomes something to fear instead of something to engage in, enjoy, and even escape into.
Jakob and Kutri are the typical protagonists in this kind of science fiction novel. They are participants of a system that they don't always like but can do little about. Kutri agrees to be on Good Breeding because she has very few options. She was abandoned by her father and her Punjabi heritage makes her stand out. She knows that she is being sold and forced into marriage but it her choices are limited to either being owned in public or assaulted and possibly murdered in private. From the moment that she arrives in California, Kutri is constantly monitored and on the air. People study what she wears, what she eats, where she goes, and who she talks to so they can assess her potential as a bride. Despite the pampering and celebrity treatment that she receives, Kutri is always on, a prisoner of instant fame.
Jakob has his reasons to stay within this system because he literally cannot think of any other options. He is a widower and remembers how his wife died but nothing else about her: her appearance, personality, or even her name. He was given a modification chip inside his brain to forget everything about her except for the fact that he was once married. This chip also causes Jakob and other men to be unable to resist or act with violence towards the Studio and their representatives.
It is only after Jakob and Kutri start to develop feelings for each other, that they decide to actively rebel. In this process they meet other characters who also would like to see The Studio and the rest of these tyrants taken down.
The resistance has many faces and takes many forms. There's Jason's former partner, Sven, who collected memorabilia from the time before the Slow Plague (things like Pokemon cards, old cell phones, board games, acid free paper books, and vinyl records). There's Kirmi Teng, the previous groom who commits an act of violence live on air. There's Jimmy Ching, a pawn shop owner with his own secret connection to Jakob and Kutri.
In one chilling chapter, the couple encounter the A&L Club, a private club for men who lost their appendages after being convicted of various crimes and now want to restore the right to divorce. Then there's La Vie, a group consisting mostly of former Good Breeding couples who are planning an all out rebellion in which the women will fight to free the other women from bondage and deactivate the chip from men's brains.
The resistors are various individuals and groups that have their own agendas for fighting the Studio. Some are more trustworthy than others and some show that just because they have the same end goal in mind, getting rid of this oppressive government, doesn't necessarily mean that they are good human beings. What they have in common is they want this oligarchy gone and will use any means necessary to achieve it.
Kutri is a sharp warning about the future where beauty is valued too highly, audience dependence on exploitation entertainment becomes destructive, and love, friendship, and commitment are distant memories. It demonstrates that we have the ability to let our forms of entertainment destroy or save us.
