Parallax

by Brendan Jones, Damian Jones

Big Government is no longer just watching... In a totalitarian future the government is controlled by a shadow organization called THE COMPANY. They are the law and the G-MEN are their brutal enforcers, any infraction by the populace can result in imprisonment inside THE PARALLAX a devilish system of rooms where combatants face off in a battle to the death. Escape is impossible, but that's never stopped Kacia Jordan before. Kacia Jordan is young, beautiful and deadly. Ex-military special forces she became aware of the insidious nature of The Company when her husband Travis was killed inside the Parallax. Determined to find out why the totalitarian government had Travis murdered Kacia sets out on a path of revenge that won't stop until all involved have been made to pay. PARALLAX is an adrenaline fueled adventure that will appeal to readers who like their action to come thick and fast. Author Brendan and Damian Jones are brothers from Australia and 'Parallax' is their fourth novel. Their previous novel was the supernatural horror 'Soul Asylum'.

160 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 10, 2015

Reviews

[Sam · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a freebie on Amazon. It wasn't really my cup o' tea, for various reasons.

I struggled with this one. The story is set in an unnamed city in an indeterminate future. Society is subject to curfew, G-men roam the streets to maintain order, and there is rumour of the existence of the Parallax. The central character is Kacia, ex-service woman who is trying to unravel the mysterious circumstances of her husband's death five years earlier. But her investigation draws the attention of those in power, and it's not long before she discovers the truth of the Parallax.

This was a very depressing story that left me unsatisfied. Written in the present tense (which I generally don't like in fiction), the writing style was quite staccato and I found it quite jarring to read. It certainly wasn't smooth. Not knowing where or when this was set may have been deliberate on the part of the authors, to give readers the impression that it could be their own home and future, but for me it just felt unanchored. There is no real explanation given as to why there is a curfew, or how or why this totalitarian society came to be, and left me feeling as if it were all very abstract.

The characters are OK, but I didn't really connect with any of them, not even Kacia. The motives for her husband's death were somewhat mundane, and there wasn't really enough about him to understand why she was so obsessed about finding out what happened to him. The Parallax reminded me somewhat of The Cube series of movies, but where the cubes differed from one room to another, the Parallax was the same room each time. Solve the puzzle of the first room and you can, in theory, survive, assuming nobody in there with you kills you. There was one room that was an exception, but there was no explanation given as to why that one was different.

All in all, this was bleak and depressing, and, ultimately, not a book I enjoyed.