THE MOTHER CODE

RELEASED OUT NOW! (Hardback 25 August) 337 pages | Hardback/ebook/ audiobook

Author Carole Stivers

Publisher Hodder & Stoughton

A world in which the human race is slowly wiped out by a virus-like bioweapon doesn’t exactly feel like the most escapist read right now, but this otherwise rather disappointing debut does provide an interesting examination of the situation.

The US military has created an engineered bioweapon that attacks the lungs; somewhat predictably, it loses control of this and is forced to come to terms with the knowledge that almost everyone in the world is going to die in the following few years. Faced with this, scientists engineer babies that are immune, along with robot “mothers” that can raise them in isolation. Of course, nothing quite goes to plan…

The book has been billed as an examination of “what it means to be a mother”, but doesn’t really engage with that concept. Robots are imprinted with female personalities (the primary carer is still female even when inorganic!), then bond with and raise children, none of whom seem to have any major psychological issues resulting from their strange upbringing. For a novel about such huge, emotive issues, it’s strangely passionless, and it’s difficult to feel engaged with the children, the robots or those who make them. Rhian Drinkwater