I read this the same month as Wool, which turned out to be a useful accident. Both are about societies that have agreed not to look at something.
What strikes me is that the state is barely the villain. The books were abandoned before they were banned. People chose the wall screens and the speed and the noise, and the burning arrived afterward to finish a job already mostly done. That is a harder argument than straight censorship, and it has aged better than any of the hardware in the book.
The firehouse scenes are still the best writing in it. The ending, with the book people walking and reciting, is the part that stays.
Read February 2025.
