![]() ![]() But though Paull has taken plenty of liberties with bee biology, her "characters" are far more alien than Richard Adams's humanised rabbits. Inevitably, since this is a well-researched fantasy about animals, starring a feisty heroine instead of a band of furry brothers, The Bees is hailed as " Watership Down for The Hunger Games generation". Playwright Laline Paull's debut novel, a tale of mother courage, conflict and dystopia among social insects, is causing some excitement in the book world. Soon, Flora has left her despised origins behind, and is rocketing up through the ranks: feeding the Queen's hallowed newborns, tending the darling young grubs encountering the glorious Maleness of the drones, and even, after a display of savage courage, privileged to attend on the Queen herself. In no time she has attracted the attention of an exalted priestess bee, who saves her from summary execution by the deformity police, and finds her "most notable". But she's strong, a quick learner and she can speak, while others of her caste are mute. She's too big, she's too dark, she's grotesquely ugly. ![]() Her sisters in this batch of lowly sanitation workers emerge modestly: Flora smashes her way out of the pupating cell, in a storm of waxy shrapnel. F lora 717 is a bee with problems, right from the start. ![]()
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