Welcome to the Madhouse by S. E. Sasaki is a story about medicine—doctors and nurses human and robotic alike, swarm everywhere—it’s a story about war, it’s a story about PTSD, it’s a story about death seasoned with sparkling humour. When Doctor Grace Lord arrives at the medical space station Nelson Mandela, after being hired for the job of her dreams, she is introduced to excellent surgeons, kind nurses, violent surgically altered superhuman soldiers, and androids. But not everything looks as it is and by the end, Dr. Lord will be up for a few surprises.
I enjoyed so much reading this book. Dialogues are entertaining, most of the times, descriptions are vivid, and emotions run wild. I didn’t expect to read so many humorous dialogues in a sci-fi focused on medicine and doctors, and it was a lovely surprise. Hiro Al-Fadi must have been fun to write. It certainly was fun to read to me. His interactions with Grace and Dr. Cech, the anaesthetist, are hilarious. Al-Fadi is definitely my favourite character, and I’m looking forward to reading more about him.
What I didn’t like was the lack of unlikeable characters. Everyone is nice and kind to others. There’s no trace of envy, or other negative traits, which makes this story look more like a fairy tale than sci-fi, but I have nothing against fairy tales. There’s only one exception I won’t name to avoid spoilers. That character will probably have a major presence in book two, but here it’s treated as a secondary plot to sum up quickly in the last few pages. This character could have easily been the villain, but it’s really given little depth and room to develop.
I’m curious to see if in book two there’s really more about this villain than we saw in this first instalment.
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