The Glass House It is an interesting book with two very different parts.
On the one hand, it tells us the story of a society with a high level of genetic engineering, where people decide of their own free will to erase their memories and change the morphology of their bodies, where interstellar travel is done by teleportation and where wars are waged using "worms" that erase the memories of their victims (both individually and on a planetary level). This part of the book is in the cyberpunk style and is a bit heavy.
On the other hand, we have the protagonists of this story taking part in a sociological experiment and carrying out a 3-year stay in a closed habitat (The Glass House) in which they recreate a society similar to that of the 20th century, almost without technology.
We also have a killer who follows in the footsteps of one of the protagonists and tries to kill him wherever he is, even though he doesn't remember anything.
The description of the closed habitat is interesting and has something reminiscent of the descriptions of the ships that Arthur C. Clarke's characters encounter in stories like Appointment with Rama.
The society that is initially recreated in the habitat is very reminiscent of that of the 1950s: women who are obedient housewives, men who go to work to earn a salary with which to support their wife, children and home. And all together, on Sunday, they go to Church to continue being indoctrinated. Society is sustained by the control of actions that deviate from this normality, based on the “what will they say” and based on public recriminations on Sunday in the Church. I could not help but think of the social control that is exercised in some societies such as those we can find in Arab countries or even in some Spanish towns, where everyone is watching everyone else and where the “what will they say"enforces the law of normality.
The recreation of this society makes you feel as suffocated as the protagonists do when reading the book... but there is no escape. In order to survive, the protagonists will have to discover the true purpose of the Glass House, they will have to discover how to prevent this purpose from being fulfilled and they will have to deal with the murderer who is looking for them but does not know their identities.
Just one criticism, and it's not the author's fault: the book is riddled with typographical errors. So many that they irritate the most patient reader (and I am patient).
Despite everything, the book is original and has an unexpected ending. It is worth reading.
