PanThe Quill & QuireDescribed by its publisher as a literary novel that is not quite dystopian, Audrey Schulman’s Theory of Bastards offers readers an interesting premise with potential that is never fully realized ... While Theory of Bastards is marketed as science fiction, the way Schulman approaches the narrative does not come across as innovative or genre-bending. The story would have benefited from directly addressing the parallels between the bonobos and their human minders, but the novel doesn’t do this, choosing instead to skate over the narrative potential here. By not going deeper into the implications of the fictional environment she has created, the author evinces an unwillingness to engage in the kind of robust world-building required in a truly satisfying dystopian novel.
