Review: Bleak Tale Of The Future
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 08 29, 2012
This is a bleak tale of the future that is written well and leaves a lasting impression.  Cassie O'Neil lives in the Britain of the future.  The reader is left with a sense that most of the arable land has been covered over by concrete with massive overpopulated cities.  Since there is no land to grow food, starvation is rampant and the ruling government class has put major martial law controls in place.  Reproduction is strictly controlled and breaking the law by having an unapproved child is punishable by death.  Cassie has broken the law by naively becoming pregnant and bringing to term a little boy. Of course the ruling class lives much better than the commoners and has created a sick game show 'The Ultimate Choice' to allow those condemned to death to choose who will receive the condemned person's organs after execution has taken place.  The main story covers Cassie's travels and adventures once she successfully escapes from the game show and becomes a kind of rebel trying to survive on her own in a world where it is hard to find anyone to trust and various forms of death are around every corner. Cassie is a simple but noble character who is very naive, having lived her short life controlled by the state, receiving little physical nourishment and an intellectual diet of state propaganda. She meets and falls in with various other rebels and after being coerced into carrying out a resistance attack on a state laboratory, her small group is captured by the state authorities and given one choice to survive by carrying out an espionage assignment for Britain. This assignment will take her and her small group through a starving, zombie-like France into Germany.  Sadly, throughout the book in order for Cassie to continue living she is forced to repeatedly make ultimate choices that aren't really choices at all. In the end this reader is left with a sense of pity and helplessness for Cassie, since her long-term survival and happiness is never an actual choice within her control, and she ends up being used as a tool by the state. But, at the same time Cassie's simple unwavering hope and striving for a better future for herself and her child make her someone to hold up as an example of the better half of the human spirit.