Kansas City Sci-Fi/Fantasy Book Club

“Classics on the Side” is an additional, informal book club meet-up, which focuses on older and classic works from the sci-fi and fantasy genres. To see the Classics on the Side booklists, visit our Goodreads account: https://www.goodreads.com/classics_on_the_side_kc

Join us to discuss “The Children of Men,” by P.D. James. This dystopian novel was published in 1992 and was one of the BBC’s 100 Most Influential Novels in 2019.

Book synopsis from Amazon:

Civilization itself is crumbling as suicide and despair become commonplace. Oxford historian Theodore Faron, apathetic toward a future without a future, spends most of his time reminiscing. Then he is approached by Julian, a bright, attractive woman who wants him to help get her an audience with his cousin, the powerful Warden of England. She and her band of unlikely revolutionaries may just awaken his desire to live . . . and they may also hold the key to survival for the human race.

Told with P. D. James’s trademark suspense, insightful characterization, and riveting storytelling, The Children of Men is a story of a world with no children and no future.

Please note, this meeting will be at the Corinth Library of the Johnson County Public Library.

Description from Goodreads.com:
Discover this creepy, charming monster-slaying fantasy romance—from the perspective of the monster—by Nebula Award-winning debut author John Wiswell

Shesheshen has made a mistake fatal to all monsters: she's fallen in love.

Shesheshen is a shapeshifter, who happily resides as an amorphous lump at the bottom of a ruined manor. When her rest is interrupted by hunters intent on murdering her, she constructs a body from the remains of past meals: a metal chain for a backbone, borrowed bones for limbs, and a bear trap as an extra mouth.

However, the hunters chase Shesheshen out of her home and off a cliff. Badly hurt, she’s found and nursed back to health by Homily, a warm-hearted human, who has mistaken Shesheshen as a fellow human. Homily is kind and nurturing and would make an excellent co-parent: an ideal place to lay Shesheshen’s eggs so their young could devour Homily from the inside out. But as they grow close, she realizes humans don’t think about love that way.

Shesheshen hates keeping her identity secret from Homily, but just as she’s about to confess, Homily reveals why she’s in the area: she’s hunting a shapeshifting monster that supposedly cursed her family. Has Shesheshen seen it anywhere?

Eating her girlfriend isn’t an option. Shesheshen didn’t curse anyone, but to give herself and Homily a chance at happiness, she has to figure out why Homily’s twisted family thinks she did. As the hunt for the monster becomes increasingly deadly, Shesheshen must unearth the truth quickly, or soon both of their lives will be at risk.

And the bigger challenge remains: surviving her toxic in-laws long enough to learn to build a life with, rather than in, the love of her life.

Many of our book discussions lead to broader conversations about what people have been reading and watching, as well as contemporary issues of science and culture. Each month, we have a meetup with this as the explicit goal: we'll open the conversation by talking a bit about what we have been reading lately (possibly asking everyone to give a brief synopsis of a recent book they've read and their impressions of it), and continue where the conversation takes us.