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Static Shock
Can you wear a watch? Do you know people who can’t? Such people have a legally recognized status as electromagnetics, nicknamed “Readers.” Reader Jeanne Muir decides to expand her horizons when a new job gets offered to her out of the blue, but when she takes it, she finds herself framed for attempted murder—can she risk asking mysterious Ran Owata, a fellow Reader who is no longer accepted among their kind, for help?
271 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 1, 2012
8 people want to read
About the author
Eilis Flynn
24 books20 followersEilis Flynn has spent a large share of her life working on Wall Street or in a Wall Street-related firm, so why should she write fiction that's any less based in our world? She spends her days aware that there is a reality beyond what we can see - and tells stories about it for Cerridwen Press. Published in other genres, she lives in verdant Washington state with her equally fantastical husband and spoiled rotten cats.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 4, 2012
Abandoned by her normal parents at age eleven, EM-charged Jeanne Muir spent her teen years between a university research lab and the streets of Seattle. An adult now, she does part-time work for the Geller Institute consulting on energy leaks. Six months ago, she was arrested for being in the wrong place at the wrong time and it earned her an abrupt change in duties. She was remanded to testing (that she dislikes), training (that didn’t interest her the first time around), and boring consulting jobs.
Static Shock opens with Jeanne on two critical missions. First, she must reach her destination without overloading every single thing that runs on an electrical charge. It’s a challenge for her anywhere in urban Seattle, but today, points A and B are on the U of Washington campus. Second, she has to ask something of her boss. She’s optimistic, but there’s a good chance that he will say no. The boss that greets her in the Gellar Institute director’s office, however, isn’t the one she’s expecting. That man, Sam, was peeled off a campus statue a few hours earlier and carted off to a mental institution. The new director is a sexy younger man who puts her on her guard. He’s a reader who doesn’t behave much like one, which tips her off to who he is.
Ran Owata serves as a bridge between readers and normals, but his name has become a dirty word among those like him and Jeanne. Because their EM fields magnify each other in close proximity, readers are prohibited from congregating in groups…a violation of their Constitutional right to assembly that does not escape Jeanne. Ran’s advocation of self-control for integration purposes rubs most readers the wrong way, but that’s the bright side of his problem. He’s also associated with a controversial law that would see readers interred into camps. At the least, he’s viewed by readers as the enemy, at most, the boogeyman. At the thought of his name, Jeanne freaks out, and her EM field blows half of the light bulbs on the director’s floor.
Static Shock has an intriguing premise. The extra-normal condition of Jeanne, Ran, and the other readers is a byproduct of an evolutionary change colliding with a technological society where that this new property of the human condition negatively affects. As such, the readers are ostracized by the other 80% whose lives are built upon the electronic backbone of modern societies’ critical infrastructure. The views of norms, as the readers call them, range from wariness to prejudice to outright fear. Politicians, whether caving to the masses or earning brownie points, have written increasingly restrictive laws inhibiting where they can go, when they can go there, and who they can meet. Other laws have upgraded the wiring in apartment houses to sensate wiring…a technological advancement for which landlords charge their tenants more. Landlords who don’t have it can charge readers a premium that makes renting nearly impossible in one of the America’s most expensive cities. The gloves that readers wear to shield both them and the devices they handle from shock are the new badge of discrimination and segregation…like the Stars of David and colored triangles of Nazi Germany, or racial identifiers throughout history.
The details, great and small of this world makes the not-so-distant-future in Static Shock tangible for the reader. The social issues and concerns are contemporary, relevant, and I very much appreciated the focus given to civil rights. In addition, the author's style is fluid and clean, which allowed me to read the bulk of the story in four hours, and the interaction between Jeanne and Ran was, for the most part, believable and appropriately paced. My problem with the book lies in one particular scene with Jeanne and Ran that I found un-believable. Ran does something that I feel…based upon his behavior to that point…was very much out of character. And Jeanne’s response to it felt out of character as well. After this very short, very odd scene, they find their groove again and the relationship continues exactly as I had expected it to. If the scene had been written slightly differently, or taken out completely, I would have given this book five stars.
Jeanne is enjoyable as a beleaguered smart ass, and Ran is charming as an understated, older, wiser counterpart. Clearing Jeanne’s name of the crime she’s wanted for may be the point of their adventure, but it would be hard not to cheer on bond that forms between them along the way. Static Shock is a solid book that I believe my fellow fans of made-for-SyFy movies will enjoy.
Static Shock opens with Jeanne on two critical missions. First, she must reach her destination without overloading every single thing that runs on an electrical charge. It’s a challenge for her anywhere in urban Seattle, but today, points A and B are on the U of Washington campus. Second, she has to ask something of her boss. She’s optimistic, but there’s a good chance that he will say no. The boss that greets her in the Gellar Institute director’s office, however, isn’t the one she’s expecting. That man, Sam, was peeled off a campus statue a few hours earlier and carted off to a mental institution. The new director is a sexy younger man who puts her on her guard. He’s a reader who doesn’t behave much like one, which tips her off to who he is.
Ran Owata serves as a bridge between readers and normals, but his name has become a dirty word among those like him and Jeanne. Because their EM fields magnify each other in close proximity, readers are prohibited from congregating in groups…a violation of their Constitutional right to assembly that does not escape Jeanne. Ran’s advocation of self-control for integration purposes rubs most readers the wrong way, but that’s the bright side of his problem. He’s also associated with a controversial law that would see readers interred into camps. At the least, he’s viewed by readers as the enemy, at most, the boogeyman. At the thought of his name, Jeanne freaks out, and her EM field blows half of the light bulbs on the director’s floor.
Static Shock has an intriguing premise. The extra-normal condition of Jeanne, Ran, and the other readers is a byproduct of an evolutionary change colliding with a technological society where that this new property of the human condition negatively affects. As such, the readers are ostracized by the other 80% whose lives are built upon the electronic backbone of modern societies’ critical infrastructure. The views of norms, as the readers call them, range from wariness to prejudice to outright fear. Politicians, whether caving to the masses or earning brownie points, have written increasingly restrictive laws inhibiting where they can go, when they can go there, and who they can meet. Other laws have upgraded the wiring in apartment houses to sensate wiring…a technological advancement for which landlords charge their tenants more. Landlords who don’t have it can charge readers a premium that makes renting nearly impossible in one of the America’s most expensive cities. The gloves that readers wear to shield both them and the devices they handle from shock are the new badge of discrimination and segregation…like the Stars of David and colored triangles of Nazi Germany, or racial identifiers throughout history.
The details, great and small of this world makes the not-so-distant-future in Static Shock tangible for the reader. The social issues and concerns are contemporary, relevant, and I very much appreciated the focus given to civil rights. In addition, the author's style is fluid and clean, which allowed me to read the bulk of the story in four hours, and the interaction between Jeanne and Ran was, for the most part, believable and appropriately paced. My problem with the book lies in one particular scene with Jeanne and Ran that I found un-believable. Ran does something that I feel…based upon his behavior to that point…was very much out of character. And Jeanne’s response to it felt out of character as well. After this very short, very odd scene, they find their groove again and the relationship continues exactly as I had expected it to. If the scene had been written slightly differently, or taken out completely, I would have given this book five stars.
Jeanne is enjoyable as a beleaguered smart ass, and Ran is charming as an understated, older, wiser counterpart. Clearing Jeanne’s name of the crime she’s wanted for may be the point of their adventure, but it would be hard not to cheer on bond that forms between them along the way. Static Shock is a solid book that I believe my fellow fans of made-for-SyFy movies will enjoy.
March 30, 2012
Readers are twenty percent of society. As the world becomes increasingly higher tech, those of us who wreak havoc with electronic systems become outcasts, forced to visibily identify themselves with gloves. Some want them in concentration camps, some want to reeducate them, some want to lobotomize them. This is the world Reader Jeanne Muir lives in, a futuristic Seattle that still feels very much like the city I know today.
Jeanne lives on the outskirts of society, and can't turn down a chance to get an apartment of her own and a decent-paying job with a powerful company. When everything goes wrong, she's lucky the Readers have broken the rules and founded an underground movement of their own.
Characterization and setting are such strengths here. I loved the world-building behind a futuristic yet entirely recognizable Seattle area. There is also a sweet romance element here with mysterious Ran Owata.
A science fiction-romantic suspense hybrid not to be missed!
Jeanne lives on the outskirts of society, and can't turn down a chance to get an apartment of her own and a decent-paying job with a powerful company. When everything goes wrong, she's lucky the Readers have broken the rules and founded an underground movement of their own.
Characterization and setting are such strengths here. I loved the world-building behind a futuristic yet entirely recognizable Seattle area. There is also a sweet romance element here with mysterious Ran Owata.
A science fiction-romantic suspense hybrid not to be missed!
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews