Overview
After around a decade of not reading anything at all, I recently finished Milky's book, Motive Black, which can be purchased on Amazon at an affordable price. It's a crass, and frankly disgusting, blend of body horror and dystopian satire, with a surprising amount of mystery to keep things interesting throughout its 400 pages.
The premise of this dystopia is a tiered society living in a "Safe Dome," wherein people are categorized by their Safety Rating, a social credit that rewards those who engage in more degenerate acts, such as modifying their "Shells" or bodies, with horrific modifications including new hands, noses, tails, and most disturbingly, transmogrified lollies.
Also, everyone is gay, and being exclusively interested in one type of person is looked down upon by Google.
Those with higher Safety scores have access to greater privileges from Google, the sentient female AI that everyone interfaces with to access everything. Google also acts as an omniscient observer and companion. There is no currency system, so falling out of grace with Google is often a death sentence.
Ruling above her is the Institute, a mysterious unelected government composed of scientists obsessed with implementing a program called IMAGINE that will integrate Google directly into the minds of everyone.
Concepts like race, gender, family, and humanity are completely absent, with the residents of the Safe Dome referring to themselves in a dehumanizing dialect where words like "I" are replaced with "My Shell." Acts that lower a Safety Rating, such as being "selfish" (not having sex with one of the numerous monstrosities roaming the Dome) or discriminatory, are referred to as "whiteness," although this concept is separate from being racially white, as there are white characters with high Safety Ratings.
The world is dark and depressing and does a great job at making you feel like it's a form of hell; there isn't a single moment that you'll ever wish to see it or be in it, which I think is really hard to pull off. Creating a world that absolutely no one would want to live in isn't easy.
In this world, there's no escapism. If you tried to just rot in your room while Google injects you with happiness chemicals, she'd eventually just drag you out of there to be cannibalized by furries. Or she could bring you to her personal dungeon and dress you up as a girl until you hang yourself from the rope in your cell provided by the guards.
Plot Summary
The plot follows Simon, a man who hasn't undergone any body modifications, slowly waking up to the world around him and rejecting the more revolting aspects of it.
His lack of modification led to him being one of the most popular Shells on the Safe Dome's internet due to passing as a natural woman, free of all the body modifications present in almost every other Shell. Early on, he begins to dream of a woman named Ana, the only natural woman he's ever seen, and starts to dress as her, which enrages Google, leading her to retaliate against him by denying his privileges.
Things escalate from there, and Simon begins to act against her and the Institute, although given his circumstances and upbringing, his actions are often less than rational.
Writing Style
The writing style employed by Milky is incredibly unique and may be hard to comprehend at first. As mentioned earlier, the characters all speak in a detached dialect, where words like "I," "my," and gendered pronouns are rarely, if ever, used.
It's also excruciatingly gross at times and had me cringing away from my iPad, which is an accomplishment.
The story is told from a first-person perspective, which I think helps a lot to convey how weird it is. There's also a ton of invented terms, such as "Flower" and "Stern," to describe the feminine and masculine, that help to flesh out the world.
I think the use of vulgarity and vivid descriptions was necessary to sell the narrative as a believable story. Skirting around uncomfortable sexual topics would've left the narrative feeling sterile and inoffensive.
Horror elements are used sparingly, and there aren't any insane, unbelievable action sequences. There are some light supernatural tones, but depending on your interpretation, these could be either hallucinations or actual spiritual entities.
An example is that throughout the book, Simon sees talking spiders in various locations that he can recall the scientific names of, but it could be assumed these are some form of hallucination. Seeing spiders is a common sleep paralysis side effect.
Theme
Motive Black explores the externalities of freedom while emphasizing the innate desire for things that are good and natural present in everyone, regardless of how far they've strayed to the excesses of passions.
There are no moral guides present in the story to tell you what's right and wrong, and Simon's realizations are imperfect.
No spoilers, but he doesn't just become based and redpilled overnight. His changing perspectives and emergent desires are in line with his nature and feel organic in the context of the world.
Now we just have to wait for the anime adaptation to come out.
