Review: Well-crafted world with excellent low-key details
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 06 8, 2011
Imagine a future where all the sicknesses of old age have been eradicated. Sounds heavenly, right? But that's not how it seems in Christine Amsden's wonderfully imagined dystopia, The Immortality Virus. The author has mastered that powerful art of not explaining everything. As a result, she creates a world filled with details that explain themselves, impinging on the reader's consciousness without question, building up to a powerful whole. In this dark world, Grace Harper has been given a task, to find the man whose research first caused "The Change," plunging the world into its miserable state. On the way she'll meet old friends and new, revisit questions of eternal love, and ponder how once this dystopia really might have seemed heavenly.The story takes its protagonist through crowded city streets, onto subways, past tiny apartments with amenities mimicking those of past centuries, and out into fields where researchers struggle to find new foods that will feed the masses. But which researchers, and which helpers can she trust?Grace, who long ago rejected grace, finds unexpected kindness in others and herself, plus unexpected sympathy for the damned. Meanwhile the reader comes to see our world and hers through different eyes, and ponder where our dreams might one day take us.I wasn't expecting this novel to grab me by the throat quite so consistently, but Christine Amsden's vision of the future has truly come to haunt me. For anyone who enjoyed Blade Runner, who likes imagining what might one day be, or who wonders how long love might endure, I definitely recommend this book.Disclosure: I received an ecopy of this book from Twilight Times Books in exchange for an honest review.