Book Review: The Ragpicker

Reviewed by Samantha Hui

Innovative sci-fi exploring the essential entanglement between the dualities of human existence and nature

Life and death. Birth and destruction. Technological advancement and technological warfare. 

“‘Is love your greatest weakness?’ Server asked me. ‘Or your greatest strength?’”

Nature and humanity do not exist as a dichotomy; humanity consumes and consumes itself. The Ragpicker interlaces nature and technology masterfully throughout this tale of existential and spiritual connection. Joel Dane crafts a post-technological apocalypse world that is both lush and dilapidated, full of flora and fauna as well as copper wires and digital networks. There are people who are made to cheat death by bonding with technology, but in turn, the effects reduce them to animal urges. In the war between “us” and “the other,” The Ragpicker explores the urgent need for true connectivity.

“Instant, proportional, wholehearted responses that maximize collectivized emotion while minimizing individualized action–that never stop proving that none of us is as cruel as all of us.”

The Ragpicker is on an odyssey to return home, to retrieve more data pieces of his deceased husband, to prevent his husband from truly being gone. Having lost everything and everyone, having done things he wishes he had never done, his search for his departed husband is ultimately a search for meaning.

He crosses paths with a precocious, young girl Ysmany who enlists his help with smuggling an orphaned baby from her town ruled by a dictator named Server. In Ysmany’s betrayal of Server and ultimately her friends and family, her journey has her questioning her loyalties and purpose.

“‘Obits’—programmed personifications of the beloved dead–exist in partial suspension in my personal digital network as does Default, a virtual assistant that stitches together information from tattered databases and wiki patches.”

This novel is full of action and suspense and simultaneously boasts some deeply philosophical dialogue. The thoughts and intended communication of the Ragpicker feel like a stream of human consciousness mixed with rote, collected knowledge gathered from years of digital data. The characters consider dictionary definitions of God, religion, community, and the sort, but they also grapple with the lived experience of these ideas. Their words and their minds contradict what they once believed to be true. 

“I am a troubadour of wreckage, I am beautiful in the eyes of the ruins. What I am is, is a monument to the inevitability of consequences–unless I mean the consequences of inevitability, I can’t tell. Words crumble and decay but I trust this dramaturgical template to reassemble them to your specifications.”

I love that amidst all the worldbuilding and character development, Ysmany often tells stories she’s learned to the Ragpicker and the Ragpicker tries to share his wisdom in return. The Ragpicker is almost mute; there is something about him psychologically that prevents him from being able to speak clearly and in full sentences. Ysmany on the other hand is mistrustful, so she often does not say what is on her mind. But in their attempts to connect, storytelling is a powerful tool to recount the past and share wisdom. 

“‘We wouldn’t need stories if we lived forever,’ I told him. ‘My father told me that, too. That the reason for stories is death.’”

The Ragpicker is an existential science fiction novel about the aftermath of a post-technological apocalyptic world. The book explores the love and connection that comes with storytelling and tradition as well as the destruction and corruption that comes with societal rules enforced for the sake of power, having lost sight of the initial reason. The language of the novel can be difficult to follow at times because of its nontraditional narrative style, but readers are rewarded with characters full of depth and an expansive world that becomes fuller with each read.

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