Review: NC-17:  Not for Early Teen Readers
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 12 9, 2013
There are many saving graces in Christopher Nutall's Empire Corps series. Much of his stuff seems well written, even if he lectures the reader at times on present politics, in the seeming guise of futuristic fiction.  But I found this installment hard to get through.Mister Nutall casts a very jaundiced eye upon the failures of present teaching systems in the UK and US.  An appendix gives us insights from his own experience with the UK school system, that may partially explain the sources of his evident anger.  As a cautionary tale, perhaps this book shows us in a very extreme form, where systems of representative government and public education could find themselves if political correctness is not balanced by better accountability for actual results.  But the form of the tale is indeed extreme, and at times over-tedious.I encourage Mister Nutall to keep writing and exploring.  I'll read other books among his work. But the level of graphic sexual violence found in "Reality Check" seems to me gratuitously raw stuff.  I wouldn't recommend it to any 12 or 14 year old, or to their parents.