Review: Interesting dystopian story
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 05 24, 2014
3.5 stars. A fascinating dystopian story that started so well but went a direction I didn’t expect and really didn’t like. Keith Bordon lives in a world where skin on skin touch is illegal. Born from a time of rampant disease the government banned touch from the casual to the intimate, and provides suits that prevent such contact. However, they provide simhouses were people can go for simulated sex understanding that restricting sex entirely is impossible. Keith has worked in a simhouse forever, attaching the electrodes and maintaining the programs and chambers that serve the clients. He has no desire to engage in “wireless” sex until Aiden Maxwell. Keith is attracted to Aiden and Aiden flirts back until the day he convinces Keith to meet him at a forbidden “wireless” lounge. Despite his better judgment Keith’s curiosity gets the best of him and he agrees, meeting Aiden and engaging the first skin on skin touch he’s ever had.Here I though Witt nailed Keith, his struggle with wanting what’s forbidden to him, the excitement and nervousness of knowing he’ll finally get it, the euphoria of feeling it, then the confusion and shame in the aftermath.Aiden convinces Keith the freakout is normal and entices Keith back for more and more. The story is told from Keith’s POV only and as a result I had problems warming up to Aiden. We know virtually nothing about him (or about Keith either but being in Keith’s head gives us at least an understanding of his thoughts and motivations) and his actions with Keith don’t back up his words. He holds secrets back from Keith, continues having sex with others while claiming to wait for Keith, and does little to prep Keith for Aiden knows will be an overload of sensation. Truth is, I never liked Aiden.As the story progresses, Keith becomes obsessed with Aiden and the lounges, to the point he loses everything and this is where the story looses me. Both Aiden’s and Keith’s actions smack of addiction and if you’d swapped skin contact and sex with heroin, you’d pretty much have the same story. Admittedly, the reasons no contact are still enforced are murky but I’d have liked the story better had it moved in a direction that showed how the no contact laws made people insane, ill, something -that it was a need for survival and having skin/skin contact made Keith healthier and more balanced. Instead this need makes Keith crazy to point his world falls apart in his hunt for more of it.Now I can’t fault Witt for her portrayal of an addicted Keith. His mental degradation and desire made me shiver from the realism. It’s just not the way I expected the story to go and didn’t do much to support the movement to eliminate the ban.