K.A.

Check out the author on GoodReads K.A . (Author of Cold Cognition) | Goodreads

Cold Cognition Review

If you want to read a book before it gets banned this is one to look at because in time it will be challenged. Let's get into it.

Cover

Now that I've read through it. I do find this cover interesting. I see the direction of animals tied into emotions and considering dogs are used more casually in the story (which I'll get to.) it's an interesting abstract direction for such a book. (Personally I think I would have gone a touch more medical mind and cultish.)

I do like the title art style. Being broken it's a nice play on story and it really pops on the spine.

Interior

I couldn't get a feel for this book until the last couple chapters. Every time you catch clues where it’s going to go it goes in a different direction. With that I found it highly unpredictable and I had no idea what would happen next. There were quite a few comments about the pros and cons to emotion. I think the story did a great job discerning that balance between staying logical and emotional is the best way to live. I found it quite smart as it talks about moral discussions and emotions. You can tell there was a lot of though put into the discussions.

They never truly answered the question between Evolution and Creation which is pretty clever. As someone that believes in creation I do find the answer obvious but in the argument is decently fair taking the middle ground. I may not completely agree but it was done fairly in the story.

There were quite a few observations about emotions throughout that I would go so far as to say are relevant even to this day.

I can't just ignore how morally problematic and how weird the story can be though. I found that it seemed to over explain obvious moment and reiterate what we knew. The weakest part had to be the social justice rant in the mountains. It felt most out of place really comes out of nowhere, feels forced, and it’s toward a character you just have to roll your eyes at anyway.

I've been holding off on this segment but I can't ignore it.

I sped read the animal "death" hoping it would end sooner that it really did, because of that I skipped four pages as Teslin raided a children's hospital. What I found a little concerning is that I didn't miss anything by bypassing those pages. I have my limits and I'm not interested picturing a hospital shooting. I wasn't going to make that mistake a second time with this book.

(Playing devils' advocate)

This book does ask you to read it logically. With that angle I can see how she wrote herself in a dark hole you couldn't really escape (logically). With how ruthless this book can be it does hold back from nudity and most language that I can recall. Which does somewhat surprise me. Which leads to some of my theology. You can write around anything if you are creative enough. I do have to give credit even if I didn’t see the animal “death” coming it did set the violent tone early enough it should have been obvious.

Final observation.

There is a small touch of new age religion with the tie in with dogs, but what really threw me for a loop was the nod to, all knowing, all seeing mountains.