The Cassandra Complex: The unforgettable Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick

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The Cassandra Complex follows a forensic police scientist who is having the worst day of her life. Her apartment is broken into, the mice at the laboratory she works at are blown up, and her mentor and former lover is kidnapped. The Cassandra Complex is a reference to the feeling of knowing disaster is imminent, yet you can't stop it. In this book, set about 50 years in the future, the bio warfare and extremely high population seem to be leading the world into collapse. I wish I could have loved this one more, but I ended up having very mixed feelings. I will say that despite my issues, this was an original concept that held my interest pretty much the whole way through. I might be willing to give this author another try in the future if the right synopsis catches my eye again. Grove, Andy (August 9, 1998). "Academy of Management, Annual Meeting". Intel Keynote Transcript. Intel . Retrieved February 6, 2023. They have to bring you bad news and be Cassandras against the senior management, against the fear of management of repercussions. What I loved most was the mysterious detour it leads Cassandra on—one with a surprising twist and a much bigger purpose than she intended. The utterly heartfelt, vulnerable moments along the way made my heart so full.

My main gripes with this book are to do with how much it does feel very white, cis, and heteronormative—especially given that it’s set in London, which is such a cosmopolitan city, and also given how queer the autistic community tends to be. This also made the book feel initially less like something I’d get into: A novel that on the surface seemed to be about an autistic girl chasing a guy, with some Greek mythology thrown in. But if that impression had made me put the book down, I’d have missed out on a surprising, fun, and very enjoyable read with many thought-provoking depths. Smale [] combines well-developed characters with laugh-out-loud humor….Readers will be drawn into Cassie’s life and won’t want to leave. This neurodiverse tale is ripe for discussion.” —BOOKLIST, Starred Review The basic story is pretty-much what I wrote in this review's opening paragraph. The details tend to be logical enough as the story unfolds, although the premise underlying the whole shebang is the sort of thing that Greg Bear likes to play with. This is not a bad thing, just a bit unexpected, as the few other things of Brian Stableford's which I've read were nothing like this novel. I'm in no way qualified to say whether some of the more bizarre tidbits that are used to underpin this tale are real, or given fair treatment, but the internal logic is more than fair, so I left my "Suspend Disbelief" switch on, and enjoyed the ride, in general. That Mr. Stableford is a biologist and sociologist made it a bit easier to accept some of the more... peculiar things in this tale. In 1989, Jean Shinoda Bolen, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, published an essay on the god Apollo [8] in which she detailed a psychological profile of the "Cassandra woman" whom she suggested referred to someone suffering—as happened in the mythological relationship between Cassandra and Apollo—a dysfunctional relationship with an "Apollo man." Bolen added that the Cassandra woman may exhibit "hysterical" overtones, and may be disbelieved when attempting to share what she knows. [9] Cassandra Penelope Dankworth is not having a good day when she gets to work only to find the cherry on the rotten cake of the day is she’s being fired. Cassie doesn’t know what to think after starting the day off with a break up before it all spiraled out of control and being a creature of habit this is all just too much for her to handle.I am a fan of magical realism. I was so ready for the magic. But this magic was pushing me in directions that just didn’t feel fun.

This is a science fiction novel of enormous scope, filled with wonders. Set earlier in the same "future history" as Inherit the Earth, Architects of Emortality, and The Fountains of Youth, The Cassandra Complex is the independent story of events crucial to the creation of the universe in which the others take place. It is the twenty-first century, a world of rapid change and biotech threats and promises. World War Three, the biotech war, is on the horizon and the world as we know it is going to end. The fateful question is, who is going to choose the kind of future that will follow, and who gets to live in this new world to come? Eisenstein, L., 'The Cassandra Complex', pp. 37–41 in Haring-Smith, T., New Monologues For Women By Women – Vol II (2005)

But it's not as easy to control time as she first thinks and through a series of time re-runs we discover Cassandra's history, her odd personality traits and who the woman she is trying to avoid at all costs is. Self discovery and awareness become the byproduct for Cassandra as she tries to fix her responses to Will in their dating events. It’s half way through that she looks outside herself to discover the other side and it’s not just about her and Will anymore. Other relationships must come into play. Cassie has never really fitted in. She remembers everything. Understands nothing. And consistently says the wrong thing.

And this is where it gets blurry. Living a single day over and over is one thing – redoing it weeks at a time?

and okay, all these romances went pretty badly wrong, but that’s not really the point i’m trying to make.