IMMUNITY INDEX by Sue Burke – Review

I received this book for free from the Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Immunity Index by Sue Burke
Published by Tor Books on May 4 2021
Genres: Adult, Science fiction
Pages: 240
Format: Finished hardcover
Source: Publisher
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The nitty-gritty: A bleak futuristic pandemic story that felt a little too familiar for comfort and lacked emotion and drive.

I’m sorry to say this book just didn’t work that well for me, which is a shame because I loved Burke’s Semiosis. It took me a solid two weeks to read it, as I picked it up and put it down numerous times before I finally said “Enough!” and ploughed through to the end. 

Immunity Index takes place in an undisclosed future and revolves around two main events: a deadly pandemic, and a left wing political group who are trying to unseat the President of the United States. The story alternates chapters and perspectives among four main characters. First, we have three clone “sisters” who don’t know each other yet all look identical. Avril is a college student and lives in Chicago. She’s trying to join the “mutiny,” a group of resistors who promise social change. But Avril is considered a “dupe,” slang for “duplicate,” someone created in a laboratory, and she’s having trouble getting her peers to take her seriously. Berenike is a young girl who works at a car rental company called AutoKar and who is drawn into helping the mutiny movement later in the story. Irene is a college graduate who has found work on a farm, taking care of the family’s woolly mammoth Nimkii, resurrected from ancient DNA and forced to act as a tourist attraction. Finally, Peng is the scientist who bred all three girls in a laboratory and who now does secret government work with viruses and vaccines.

The backdrop for all four of their stories is the emergence of a killer virus that spreads like wildfire, and the reader follows each character on their own personal journey. Eventually the stories merge, but it takes the entire book for that to happen. The current President—or “Prez” as everyone calls him—is mismanaging the country and only those with money and status are considered to be true citizens. (sound familiar?) The story itself doesn’t really offer anything new to the genre, unfortunately, with all the usual elements in place that you would expect.

Still, despite that, the story could have been redeemed by interesting characters, but on that note Immunity Index fell flat as well. I never really bonded or connected with any of the characters, except maybe Irene, whose love of Nimkii was the only real emotional content, believe it or not. Otherwise, the characters felt rather lifeless and wooden, and most of their decisions seemed to be based on reactions to the horror around them, rather than true agency. Even now it’s hard for me to separate the three girls into distinct personalities, and Burke’s deadpan prose didn’t help much either. Peng is the only character who speaks in first person, and his sections were jarringly different from the rest of the book. The author implies that Peng is a trans man, which made him only slightly more interesting than everyone else. The tone of his personal story is rather ominous, as he and his fellow scientists are developing a virus that will be secretly introduced into the population on purpose.

I kept waiting for the moment when Avril, Irene and Berenike would finally meet, hoping it would give the story some life and excitement. But when they do meet, it’s at the very end of the story and it’s almost an afterthought, tacked on to a rather lackluster ending.

The format—jumping around from character to character—made for a fractured story, and I’ll admit that’s one reason it didn’t hold my interest. Without a clear, driving plot, I was confused for most of the story, and even when the pace finally picked up a bit, it was too late for me. The bottom line is that I didn’t hate the book, so much as I just didn’t find much to care about.

Sue Burke mentions in her afterward that she started writing Immunity Index before 2020, but finished it in the midst of Covid last year. Because of this odd circumstance, it’s hard to tell whether parts of the story are eerie coincidences, or whether the author included actual references to the situation we’ve been dealing with for the last year and a half. In any case, it was rather uncomfortable reading this because so much of it is familiar: the lockdowns, the mask wearing, the disinformation coming from the White House and the rash of rumors and fear mongering perpetuated by social media, and the sheer panic and hoarding by confused citizens. At this point in time, I’m ready to forget Covid and move on, so in some ways the timing of this book’s release is a bit unfortunate. Also, it doesn’t help that the cover features a huge, looming virus that looks exactly like the Covid-19 virus!

The best thing I can say about the ending is that my favorite character, Nimkii the woolly mammoth, survives everything that happens and even seems to be thriving at the end. Just like our own pandemic recovery, there is never an explosive moment in the story where the good guys win. Rather, all the characters find themselves on the other side of the crisis more or less intact, but without any kind of fanfare or emotion.

With thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.