Title: Cake Eater Author: Allyson Dahlin
Published: August 9, 2022
Genre(s): Science Fiction
Page Count: 448
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:She has a million followers on social media.
She uses her fashion-forward eye to pick the perfect angle and filter on every photo.
She’s iconic.
She’s a trend-setter.
She’s Marie Antoinette, the year is 3070, and she’s arrived in the Franc Kingdom to marry the prince, secure an alliance, and rake in likes from her fans.
Versailles is not the perfect palace Marie’s seen on The Apps. Her life is a maze of pointless rules, and the court watches her every move for mistakes. Her shy husband Louis is more interested in horses and computer-hacking than producing heirs. Versailles seems like a dream full of neon-lit statues, handsome android soldiers, and parties till dawn. Under the surface, it’s a creepy den of secrets: surveillance in Marie’s bedroom, censored news feeds, disappearing courtiers.
When Marie and Louis become king and queen long before they’re ready to rule, any efforts to aid their suffering subjects are stamped out by the mega-corporations of the First Estate. Between riots in Paris and image-wrecking social media firestorms, Marie can’t afford to lose her head. Using her social media savvy and Louis’ hacking knowledge, they try to fix their reputations and change their kingdom for the better, but the royals may find it’s already too late. They’re ruling over the end of an era.
Allyson Dahlin’s Cake Eater is a YA “retelling” of the life of Marie Antoinette, but transliterated to the year 3070. An interesting concept, and one with a lot of potential. Unfortunately, the premise is underutilized, and Dahlin fails to capitalize on the ways the futuristic setting—replete with social media, androids, and climate apocalypses—would impact the familiar tale of the doomed young queen.
I have often struggled with retellings, particularly in the context of young adult fiction. Often, authors will adopt the familiar framework of a story and place it in an entirely new context—for instance, magical Jane Eyre or modern-day Jane Eyre. This is all well and good. But when you change the characters’ situation, you must consider the ways in which a new context will alter their beliefs and actions. Edward Rochester’s secret attic wife makes a lot less sense in the 21st century, when the availability of no-fault divorce and psychotropic medications makes locking up your spouse an unjustifiable cruelty rather than an act of humanity. In the same way, a book about Marie Antoinette and the lead-up to the French Revolution which takes place a millennium into the future should consider and explore the ramifications of how the main character’s life would be impacted by the exponential advancement of technology, new social understandings of gender/sexuality, the possibility of nuclear warfare, etc.
(Emphasis on the word “should” here.)
Bafflingly, the story in Cake Eater follows a bland, true-to-history progression. It’s also a very superficial text. Dahlin does not spend any time exploring the world of 3070 France or its society. No explanation is given to how the French Bourbons and Austrian Habsburgs have been restored to rule over the same territories they possessed in the 18th Century. Nor is it made clear how, exactly 1300 years after the “real” Marie Antoinette became dauphine, this “new” Marie Antoinette is apparently living the exact same life as her predecessor, down to possessing a dog named Mops (seriously, what?). World-building is important in all forms of fiction, but particularly in science fiction and fantasy. While many readers have a collective, shared vision of what “Regency London” or “Manhattan” are like, a futuristic monarchist restoration requires a lot of explanation and depth. Cake Eater does not provide that.
Dahlin also makes the mistake of cramming decades of historical events into just six months. The real Marie Antoinette was married in 1770 and executed in 1793. In Cake Eater, Dahlin rushes from Marie’s arrival in France on May 13, 3070, to her (botched) execution on November 14. As a result, there’s simply no time to fully develop anything—not characters and their motivations, not the complex world of court politics, and certainly not the rising tension brewing amongst the lower classes. The novel is a whirlwind of scenes that correspond to specific events from Marie Antoinette’s life, but they lack meaning or sense without sufficient background information.
I also question, in general, the utility in our collective interest in writing books about “poor little rich girls” who are unaware of their own privilege until they suddenly have a come to Jesus moment and start fighting “for their people” in some ultimately meaningless way. I commented about this with respect to a YA “retelling” of Anastasia Romanov’s life that released earlier this year. I absolutely acknowledge that the historical Marie Antoinette was unfairly maligned by both her contemporaries and by historians in the decades since; I do not think she was a vapid, wasteful woman oblivious to all human suffering. However, I believe that rich white oppressors (however well-intentioned they allegedly were ) do not need to have any more prominence in the ongoing social discourse. Why not write a retelling of the French Revolution set in the year 3070, but from the point of view of one of the people living in extreme poverty as a result of climate change and malevolent corporate oligarchies?
Just a thought.
Cake Eater is not a good book. It is not well-written, and instead presents a rushed, shallow story that is confusing at best. And then as a retelling, it shows a lack of insight on Dahlin’s part, as well as a failure to fully commit to the implications of its concept. You can’t just write “oooh, Marie Antoinette with TikTok and LED dresses!” and have it be enough. Here, Allyson Dahlin displays a disappointing lack of awareness and critical thinking. This novel adds nothing fresh to the conversation.
