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    The Bees: A Novel
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    The Bees: A Novel
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    The Bees: A Novel
    Ebook356 pages6 hours

    The Bees: A Novel

    By Laline Paull

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    Born into the lowest class of an ancient hierarchical society, Flora 717 is a sanitation worker, an Untouchable, whose labour is at her ancient orchard hive's command. As part of the collective, she is taught to accept, obey and serve. Altruism is the highest virtue, and worship of her beloved Queen, the only religion. Her society is governed by the priestess class, questions are forbidden and all thoughts belong to the Hive Mind.

    But Flora is not like other bees. Her curiosity is a dangerous flaw, especially once she is exposed to the mysteries of the Queen's Library. But her courage and strength are assets, and Flora finds herself promoted up the social echelons. From sanitation to feeding the newborns in the royal nursery to becoming an elite forager, Flora revels in service to her hive.

    When Flora breaks the most sacred law of all—daring to challenge the Queen's fertility—enemies abound, from the fearsome fertility police who enforce the strict social hierarchy to the high priestesses who are jealously wed to power. Her deepest instinct to serve and sacrifice is now overshadowed by an even deeper desire, a fierce maternal love that will bring her into conflict with her conscience, her heart and her society, and lead her to commit unthinkable deeds . . .

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateMay 6, 2014
    ISBN9781443433600
    Author

    Laline Paull

    Laline Paull studied English at Oxford, screenwriting in Los Angeles, and theater in London. She lives in England with her husband, photographer Adrian Peacock, and their three children.

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    Reviews for The Bees

    4/5

    533 ratings71 reviews

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Flora 717 is an anthropomorphized bee; an odd-bee-out in the hive's restrictive society who can work sanitation, gather pollen, and attend the queen while facing many dangers within and without. It's a playful, weird and sweet story.
    • 4/5
      Wonderfully written, this novel takes you into the mind of a bee! The descriptions are amazing.
    • 4/5
      For the first 100 pages or so, I wasn't sure if this was merely a writing exercise, something tricksy without real substance, but there was an aggregation of action and a genuine through-line that made the ending of the book a more satisfying payoff than many other novels I've read recently.

      I really enjoyed this.
    • 4/5
      This was a reading group book which I quite enjoyed. I have no idea if it's scientifically accurate or not and I don't care. It's a FANTASY. Gave me a better appreciation of bees. However if there is some sort of hidden satire on human society it passed me completely. Not the best book I've read but not terrible either.
    • 5/5
      what an amazing, imaginative brain this author possesses! A book that takes place in a beehive, with sensational descriptive scenes and totally a believable narrative that draws the reader right into that world. I will never look at bee in the same way again!
    • 4/5
      This book was very scientifically inaccurate, but I really liked it!
    • 4/5
      Definitely something worth reading if you enjoyed Watership Down.
    • 3/5
      Not only was Flora 717 born into the lowest class of her society, she was also born bigger and darker than the best of them. As a sanitation bee, she is only fit to clean the hive while living to accept, obey and serve which means to do whatever is necessary for the good of the hive and the holy mother. It is discovered that Flora has many talents that are not typical of her kin and while most mutant bees are instantly destroyed, Flora is reassigned to feed the newborns. Then she is reassigned to become a forager, flying around gathering food for the hive. Flora eventually finds herself in the Queen's inner sanctum where she discovers secrets - some good, some bad. And Flora has a secret of her own, breaking the most sacred law of all.

      This started off so bad for me that I wanted to give up and I hate DNFing a book! There were so many smells that it became monotonous and irritating. But I kept at it and while there were still quite a few smells throughout the rest of the book the overall story ended up being okay. It's creative for sure, but it wasn't a book I couldn't wait to pick up again after setting it aside.
    • 4/5
      This book was quite a surprise! It was a novel about bees! It was life in the hive. Flora 717 was born into one of the lower castes of bees, a sanitation worker. It is her story throughout the book as she meets priestesses, drones, the Queen, the fertility police, and treacherous spiders. This is a world where only the Queen can breed, deformity means death, and the mantra inside the hive is accept, obey, and serve. I was unaware that this was originally written as a YA dystopian novel. I would certainly never describe it as YA or dystopian; I would classify it as as an adult sci/fantasy. This book was wildly imaginative. I would describe it as Animal Farm on steroids. I would think some of the parallels would be too complex for most young adults (teens). This is the ultimate world building novel. Had I known it was actually ABOUT bees, I probably would not have purchased the book, but I'm glad I did. It's refreshing to read outside ones genre comfort. 5 stars for creativity, 3 1/2 stars for readability.
    • 3/5
      Quite interesting
    • 3/5
      Bees are pretty awesome, people. This book does a great job at conveying the intricate structure of bee life. While the dangerous scenes were every bit as fearsome as you could hope for (and yes, as always, wasps are assholes), there was still an emotional connection I found difficult to quite make. Also, the whole motherhood thing just didn't do it for me, but overall, this novel gave quite an interesting personification of bees. I'd recommend Clan Apis if you're on a roll.
    • 2/5
      This book was lent to me by a friend who compared it to Watership Down. Not my kind of thing really, and maybe anyone who likes Watership Down would like this too. It contains a lot of bee lore but doesn't quite follow it through. Because some of the detail is accurate, the bits that are are not accurate stand out and are annoying.
    • 2/5
      Flora 717 is on the bottom rung of the hive. Given the lowest task of ensuring it is clean she has only three orders.

      Accept, obey and serve.

      She, like her sisters, are prepared to sacrifice everything for their beloved Queen. But Flora has skills that mark her out as different from a regular sanitation worker; normally it would ensure that she would be eliminated. Trusted enough to feed the newborn bees, she begins her ascent of the strict hierarchy in the hive, and becomes a forager collecting the life giving nectar. But this simple bee also holds a secret; a desire to break the most sacrosanct of laws in the hive, one that her enemies would use against her without any hesitation.

      There were a few things that I liked about this; the dystopian feel of the book; the totalitarian society and strict etiquettes of the bees, and the sole protagonist (can you call a bee that?) who sets out to fulfil her yearning. But it didn’t quite do it, for me. The plot wasn’t too bad, but even with the twists felt a little predictable and it felt a lot like Animal Farm by Orwell, where it is alien and familiar at the same time. It was a shame really as other have really liked it and I thought that I would too. 2.5 stars overall.
    • 4/5
      This book was quite a surprise! It was a novel about bees! It was life in the hive. Flora 717 was born into one of the lower castes of bees, a sanitation worker. It is her story throughout the book as she meets priestesses, drones, the Queen, the fertility police, and treacherous spiders. This is a world where only the Queen can breed, deformity means death, and the mantra inside the hive is accept, obey, and serve. I was unaware that this was originally written as a YA dystopian novel. I would certainly never describe it as YA or dystopian; I would classify it as as an adult sci/fantasy. This book was wildly imaginative. I would describe it as Animal Farm on steroids. I would think some of the parallels would be too complex for most young adults (teens). This is the ultimate world building novel. Had I known it was actually ABOUT bees, I probably would not have purchased the book, but I'm glad I did. It's refreshing to read outside ones genre comfort. 5 stars for creativity, 3 1/2 stars for readability.
    • 3/5
      The Bees is a lot of fun if you're interested in speculating on what a society run by scents, hormones, and deindividuation would be like. Which I am! There isn't much in the way of characters or plot-- things just sort of happen to Flora 717, our main character bee, until about 60% of the way through when she starts making her own decisions. A nice piece of scifi that has me reaching for books about bees.
    • 5/5
      Really odd and absorbing, a book that left me thinking differently afterwards - not so much philosophical lessons learned as having spent a week projected into the main character which is a bee. I'm keeping it to read again in a few years.
    • 3/5
      Regretfully, I had to bail on this one. I just wasn't feeling it. Not sure if it was the audio, the subject, or my mood at the time. I may revisit it some day, but today is not the day.
    • 4/5
      Flora 717 is a worker bee and the protagonist of Laline Paull's The Bees. It may sound completely far-fetched to write a story from the perspective of a bee but insanely it worked amazingly well. This author clearly did her entomological research. The story revolves around a sanitation bee born to a hive where she is at the lowest rung of society (in fact, others in her kin have not developed speech and she is marked as an oddity). At every turn, she defies convention and strikes out on her own course. Fraught with class division, religious fanaticism, and sexism The Bees gave me an entirely new insight into bee behavior...and made me crave honey. If you're looking for a book unlike any other then I encourage you to give this one a shot...unless you're terrified of bees in which case you'd best steer clear.
    • 4/5
      Fascinating insight into social order from the perspective of honeybees. Often compared to Handmaiden's Tale, this novel differs by fictionalizing the society of the bees as the natural order of the hive. This is not necessarily a dystopian or broken society, it just is.
    • 4/5
      Although this is a character driven novel, all I could envision while reading this awesome book were childhood memories of hazy 80's PBS documentary footage of interior beehives. That and some of the superior slow motion HD footage of bees on BBC these past few years. As a story, Laline Paull's The Bees is captivating, unique, and kind of bizarre. It sort of reminded me of a Richard Adam's talking animal book, except these were bees, theocratic and authoritarian bees. Paull has clearly done a lot of entomology research on bee science. I found myself intermittently putting down the book and looking up various bee science facts on the internet because I kept finding myself flabbergasted by the complex nature of bee communications. At the same time, and this is really the best part, Paull created fantastic characters that I truly cared about. That's hard to do when your main character is an insect behaving and acting like a real insect. That was the real trick here in this book: how do you make an automaton insect with a hive mind an interesting individual? But I think she managed to pull it off. The infusion of religious dogma and the whole bee outlook on the outside world was believable and consequential to the plot. My favorite scene involved a wasp attacking the hive. That doesn't sound like much at first glance, but on paper it was a very intense and detailed battle. Paull also manages to pull in some subtle themes on pesticides, big agriculture, cell phone towers, and the mysterious bee die-off that has hit the states this past decade. After a great ending all I was really left wondering is what Paull is going to write next.
    • 5/5
      What a wonderful novel. Not only do you get to find out everything you ever wanted to know about bees, there's also a good Fight-the-Power 1984ish story to go with it.
    • 5/5
      I have no idea how she managed to make me feel as though I was actually IN the beehive with Flora---the descriptions were incredible---making the bees come to life, yes, an imaginary life, but what a picture it created! I am totally impressed with the writing---really, a wonderful book!!!!
    • 5/5
      I knew from the first chapter that I would be desperately sad to finish this book, and I am. It is a gorgeous, thoughtful story with compelling characters and an emotional, satisfying conclusion -- and Paull did this all not with humans but with bees. Brilliant work.
    • 3/5
      Interesting, in that I probably learned all I ever wanted to know about bees, but didn't stir me as a work of fiction. Flora 717 and her hive sisters are incredible, no doubt, and I think I will be less inclined to freak out when a bee buzzes too close - wasps are a different matter - only insects are slightly lacking as characters. The plot, such as it is, consists of the life cycle of a bee, so no surprise with the ending, either. I love the aristocratic/religious hierarchy of the hive, with lowly Flora as a 'sanitation worker', and the episodes with the evil wasps and the 'blood lust' against the male drones certainly perked up the story, but otherwise, a non-fiction reference guide to bees would have been just as stirring, I think.
    • 5/5
      [The Bees] by [[Laline Paull]]; Orange/Baileys S/L, 2015; (5*)I read this one in bed in two nights. What a fascinating read. I was enchanted by the storytelling and the characters of the bees. The only thing I can find myself comparing this book to is the movie [Bugs] and I loved it even more.[The Bees] is a very nicely done bit of fiction on the life of the hive and all of the workers & the queen therein. I loved reading about the hierarchy of the hive and all of the different jobs of the workers told in the voice of a sanitation worker. I realize that this is a work of fiction but it has spurred me on to find a good nonfiction book on bees. I can definitely see why this one is on the short list for the Bailey's Women's Fiction prize.
    • 3/5
      An apian Watership Down mixed with elements of 1984, Shakespeare and The Handmaid's Tale, The Bees is certainly a ripping yarn. It went on slightly too long for me and had an overblown ending that made me think of Alien vs Predator. I appreciated the research that had gone into understanding bee society and biology. For the most part I didn't mind the anthropomorphising of the bees, but occasionally I found it cheesy. There are exciting moments as the heroine of the tale goes against the rules of her society and becomes a freedom fighter in the face of totalitarian rule, but around the 75% mark, I began to feel a little bored and wanted it to end. While I'm certain that the final showdown is based on fact, the anthropomorphising made it slightly ridiculous, and the epilogue was far too twee for my taste.
    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed this book. It was one that I couldn't put down because I wanted to know what would happen next. Really great character development and very well researched. Kind of a watership down idea where you really have to immerse yourself in the idea of the main character being a bee in a hive but if you can allow yourself to do this the book is fantastic. The author did a good job of mixing some mythical ideas with plenty of great scientific/biological research about bees allowing for the story to feel fantastical but also realistic enough. Makes you open up your eyes to the creatures and things buzzing around you.
    • 4/5
      The writing is really good. The story drew me right in. What is it about? It is possible that The Bees will defy review. I have read a lot of reviews that compare this book to A Handmaid's Tale, or decided it's a story about race or gender bias or the environment. I don't really think so. I think it's a story about bees, if a hive went dystopian and nobody really noticed. So if an author could insert themselves into the life of a hive and write a novel of a bee who notices that all is not right with the hive and decided to maybe do something about it, wouldn't that be cool? Even better, this bee turns out to be just herself, brave, heroic, and kind, but just herself. So, I think you should read it and make it about whatever you want, because that's what stories are for.
    • 3/5
      I thought this book was okay. I really enjoyed hearing about life in the hive, and the author has done a good job in describing it. I found the level to which the bees were personified inconsistent....sometimes, it felt like life in a real hive, then the bees started carrying dustpans or serving trays which made it feel more like a Disney movie.
    • 4/5
      An original, imaginative, memorable and surprisingly moving fantasy tale of the life of a bee hive in which the bees have human voices, failings and weaknesses, but apart from that it is based on knowledge of real bees and the environmental threats that threaten them.