Review: Unique world building
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 12 1, 2011
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. - Oscar WildeSorry, couldn't resist...The best thing about this book is the world building. The Gutter is a polluted place where the destitute and the desperate live, where people do anything legal and illegal to survive. Here they produce the goods and gadgets for the elite of society, for those living in the Sky. The Sky is inhabited by the rich and powerful and among them are humans and vampires. It's a society where people can choose to be enhanced by technology with body implants called mods.Liam is a vampire who was cast out by his family because of Daniel, his human lover, the same man he's been hired to kill. Both Liam and Daniel are the spoiled sons of wealthy families, but now Liam is forced to live in the Gutter and Daniel is fighting the company managed by his own father from the inside.Daniel was not easy to like and I confess it was hard not to want Liam to kill him. Daniel was the one that, with his reckless idealism, revealed his relationship with Liam, because he didn't want Liam to have his body further modified. He made a decision without thinking about the consequences and even when Liam told him what he had to go through to survive in the Gutter, he showed little emotion, not even a reasonable remorse. If it had been me, I would have asked Liam to kill me already because I wouldn't want to live with that guilt. I also think that it's easy to feel justified because he's doing whatever he can to make the living conditions in the Gutter better, while staying in his cozy apartment in the Sky. I do hope there will be a sequel where Daniel will have to grow up a bit and sacrifice something important too.I must confess that I liked the technological aspect so much that I felt that Liam's vampire nature was a bit redundant, even if it gave the idea of the social separation between Liam and Daniel.I hope there'll be a sequel also because the setting is ripe with possible developments - for example the vampire angles was not sufficiently explained in my opinion. I like not being told everything, but I don't like feeling too clueless. I would have cut some of Liam and Daniel's interaction for a little bit more of world background.I also think that Liam's feelings of betrayal could have been explored deeper. The fact that he's erady to kill Daniel makes clear how hurt he was, of course, but he's a bit too cold and composed as a narrator. Does it depend on the mods? Do they influence the emotional side of a person? I'd love to know.Anyway: kudos to the author for the excellent world building, it has both poetry and politics in it and the obsession with physical enhancement is also an original element. I hope to read a sequel. Where Daniel has his a$$ kicked.