Review: a pretty grim future
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 02 23, 2014
Let me start this off by providing a warning that if you're intensely religious and easily offended by people not agreeing with your way of life or beliefs, this may not be the book for you.Hell, the story flowered great and moved so smoothly from sentence to sentence that I had no complaints about the first person narrative. Normally I HATE first person. I really dislike it unless it's something like The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher where the story moved so quick and is so interesting that you sorta don't mind being in the character's head. The author made it easy to become drawn into the narrative style.Which brings us to the character himself. Harkon is a dumb arse. I'm not even going to try to lie. He fumbles from one incident to the next and I found myself waiting anxiously to see what he'd screw up next and how he'd fumble his way out of it. He's an imperfect hero who makes a lot of mistakes. A lot of mistakes. He has a full and complete array of cybernetics that were so sophisticated and cool that I had to wonder if this was standard for most people in the future or if it was only a Jonathon Harkon thing because of his background and past. He DOES have a pretty cool background. Was it too much? No, I think granted the character and his many flaws, his coolness factor was well balanced. He just made foolish choices that make you sort of want to scream at him through the pages, "STOP BEING DUMB!!!"The plot was solid, and while I won't say much about it here, I just adored the original futuristic tale of corruption. I kept waiting to see what the next gadget or invention of the future would be. How much colonization had changed the universe, and I wasn't disappointed by this writer's imagination. And then... there's the downfall. After a while, I REALLY got tired of the overuse of the word religioprick. It did become slightly bothersome, but then I was drawn back into the tale again and quickly forgot about it. As for the political scheming subplot? Eh, I'm not a political person and don't care for it that much, so I had to count off for that part of the story. It's a small inconvenience in an otherwise amazing world of wacky science-fiction. But hey, the bad guys are people you come to HATE, and I mean you hate them. You hate them a lot.If I had to sum this novel up using popular fiction, I'd say this novel made me think of an adult, erotic sort of Harry Potter with scifi themes instead of fantasy and magic. It's WACKY. Expect wacky. The sex-scenes though? I could take 'em or leave 'em because of the choice of words. Seeing medical words puts me out of the mood sorta, but that's a mild personal preference. What I counted down for had more to do with the little romantic subplot which also seemed forced to me.I never understood WHY this girl meant so much to him or understood some events at the end regarding it all! Again, a minute fraction of the story because the rest kept me reading long past my bedtime (and at school too when I should have been studying.) I hope the next novel is released soon, because I DO want to read more about Jonathon and this sweet futuristic world.Soon?Spelling & Grammar - 5Word Flow - 5Plot - 4Characters - 5Originality - 5Romance/Sex - 3Nick's Final Rating: 4.5