The Stories of Ibis by Hiroshi Yamamoto (Translated by Takami Nieda)

A wandering storyteller meets a beautiful android. Wary of all robots as androids outnumber humans, the storyteller attempts to escape but is captured by the android, Ibis. Ibis tempts the storyteller by offering to tell him seven stories of human android interactions. All humans resent the androids for taking over the world while forcing them to live isolated and uncultured lives. The storyteller cautiously and skeptically agrees to listen to Ibis’s stories. The stories do not seem to have a connection to one another at all. What is the meaning of these stories? Why is Ibis telling them to the storyteller? Can she be trusted? And what does she want from the storyteller?

I was completely surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. I got this book from my library on Valentine’s Day a part of their Blind Date with a Book event. The only thing I knew about the book prior to checking it out was: androids. I did end up reading the blurb before I read the book but it was vague enough that it gave nothing away. The way the book started off, I was immediately intrigued. However after reading the first story I was confused. I didn’t understand what the point of the story was. This just added to the excitement of reading the book because I could try to piece together the hidden connections between these stories to see why Ibis was telling them. Also why was she telling them in this particular order? Why not tell the stories chronologically? This mystery was the best part of reading this book. 

A very close second were the stories themselves! They were so good. Not all of them were written by the author (according to a quick Google search), but the way that they were put together along with the story surrounding the stories was amazing. I think the main reason that I liked this book was that I was worried that I wouldn’t like it. It seemed like it was too hipster, too intellectual, too Margaret Atwood alluding to societal problems in an exaggerated way type of book. Which it totally wasn’t! It was an engaging and fun book that may have made comments about society but I didn’t catch any of them so to me The Stories of Ibis is just a fun book about androids. Due to the fact that I found this hidden gem which I surprisingly loved I’m giving it 5 stars. I would recommend it to anyone who is into sci-fi because it is a book that is not mainstream, and I feel like everyone reads the mainstream books and forgets about these “hipster”/non-mainstream books.