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Forecast
The year is 2212, the weather is out of control, and Seattle is being rebuilt with electricity generated from negative human emotion. In a strange and turbulent world fueled by secrecy, lies and voyeurism, a sweet if stultified housewife named Helen vanishes, and Citizen Surveillant Maxwell Point, the man whose job it’s been to watch her, must recount the years leading up to her disappearance. As Helen is drawn back to the city on an increasingly suspicious errand to find a man she once loved, Maxwell begins to suspect foul play. But his own investigations draw him into the story he’s trying to tell, and a picture emerges of a lonely, hollow man so dependent on the very thing he’s trained to protect that it may color not only his judgment, but his grip on reality. In this novel inspired by the troubled relationship between an author and his craft, Shya Scanlon renders a surreal, dystopian world in which alternate motives are required and people must hide even from themselves—a world in which the only real freedom is powerlessness.
“Shya Scanlon’s brilliant first novel inhabits the skin of science fiction while setting off fireworks more extravagantly imagined and coolly displayed than those ever fired into the night air by any conventional SF novel. He zooms far beyond fiction’s usual old-fashioned feeling-states into a bright dazzling world that might have been plotted by a consortium of William Gibson, Philip K. Dick, and Don DeLillo. If there’s any justice, Scanlon is going to become a hero to his peers: he’s pointing down the path many of the youngest, hippest writers in Brooklyn still have not as yet realized they will need to take. FORECAST indicates their future, though: this is where they’ll be going.”
--PETER STRAUB
“In FORECAST, Scanlon invokes an absurd not-too-distant future that nonetheless seems altogether too believable and real. Tipping its hat to authors like Stacey Levine, China Miéville and Jonathan Lethem, Scanlon’s novel is part Science Fiction, part noir, part road narrative and part love story. Whether speaking about an effete talking dog, an underground edu-musement park or the convoluted heartbreak of a man deep in love with the woman he’s been trained to watch, Shya Scanlon’s is a new and vital voice in fabulist fiction.”
--BRIAN EVENSON
"Like the narrator of Shya Scanlon’s very funny and very frightening Forecast, we his readers, plunged into a world of dog-devouring clouds and hallucination-inducing Anti-Surveillance masks, become “both fever dreamer and the dream itself.” Carved with uncommon authority out of the mists of what’s almost surely to come, Forecast does double duty as herald of an important new literary voice on the U.S. scene and harbinger of some seriously foul weather we'll all have to contend with."
-–LAIRD HUNT
“Shya Scanlon’s brilliant first novel inhabits the skin of science fiction while setting off fireworks more extravagantly imagined and coolly displayed than those ever fired into the night air by any conventional SF novel. He zooms far beyond fiction’s usual old-fashioned feeling-states into a bright dazzling world that might have been plotted by a consortium of William Gibson, Philip K. Dick, and Don DeLillo. If there’s any justice, Scanlon is going to become a hero to his peers: he’s pointing down the path many of the youngest, hippest writers in Brooklyn still have not as yet realized they will need to take. FORECAST indicates their future, though: this is where they’ll be going.”
--PETER STRAUB
“In FORECAST, Scanlon invokes an absurd not-too-distant future that nonetheless seems altogether too believable and real. Tipping its hat to authors like Stacey Levine, China Miéville and Jonathan Lethem, Scanlon’s novel is part Science Fiction, part noir, part road narrative and part love story. Whether speaking about an effete talking dog, an underground edu-musement park or the convoluted heartbreak of a man deep in love with the woman he’s been trained to watch, Shya Scanlon’s is a new and vital voice in fabulist fiction.”
--BRIAN EVENSON
"Like the narrator of Shya Scanlon’s very funny and very frightening Forecast, we his readers, plunged into a world of dog-devouring clouds and hallucination-inducing Anti-Surveillance masks, become “both fever dreamer and the dream itself.” Carved with uncommon authority out of the mists of what’s almost surely to come, Forecast does double duty as herald of an important new literary voice on the U.S. scene and harbinger of some seriously foul weather we'll all have to contend with."
-–LAIRD HUNT
- GenresFiction
300 pages, Paperback
First published May 19, 2009
3 people are currently reading
119 people want to read
About the author
Shya Scanlon
14 books48 followersShya Scanlon's work has appeared in Mississippi Review, Literary Review, New York Quarterly, Guernica Magazine, Opium Magazine, and others. His book of prose poetry, In This Alone Impulse, was published by Noemi Press in January, 2010. His novel Forecast will be launched by Flatmancrooked on November 15th, 2010. He received his MFA from Brown University, where he was awarded the John Hawkes Prize in Fiction.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
May 4, 2011
Excellent read from an author about to break out. Full review here: http://www.cowheavybooks.com/reviews/...
May 23, 2011
[This review was originally published at The Cult.]
IT WAS AS IF I WERE BOTH THE FEVER-DREAMER AND THE DREAM ITSELF.
If you were paying attention in 2009 you may have seen the birthing of Forecast across the internet, from July to December, in forty-two installments. Billed as the Forecast 42 Project, this story is set in the year 2212, and is the bastard love-child of Kurt Vonnegut and Philip K. Dick, weaving elements of noir and science fiction into a humorous, touching love story, a narrative on what it means to see and be seen, to exist and yet be nothing more than a cog. Following this story across such esteemed online journals as Juked, Flatmancrooked, Keyhole, Redivider, Opium, Electric Literature, PANK, Word Riot, 3:AM Magazine, and Puerto Del Sol, it was a serial story that ended up landing Shya Scanlon a book deal at Flatmancrooked Publishing, giving hopes to many authors that the ways we publish, and get discovered, aren’t static and predictable.
Forecast is the story of Zara, a woman who evolves (or devolves) into Helen, changing from a spirited, independent girl, into a Stepford wife, her life a dull suburban waste, married to Jack, an oblivious idiot, undeserving of her spirit. Watching over this is Maxwell Point, a Citizen Surveillant, a man who loses himself in the process of watching her, both an essential, and irrelevant, part of her life. There is of course the talking dog, Rocket, who often provides comic relief. There is Asseem, her rebellious boyfriend, CEO of Street Cred, Inc. There is the split personality of Blain/Busy, who may be more than he seems, good cop, bad cop, all in one body. Or is it two? Her parents, the professor, Knuckle and his Dirty Dogs fast food chain, it’s a full cast of miscreants and prophets, players and pawns. And this all takes place in Seattle, where in this possible future, electricity is gone, power created by negative energy, farmed by Emotional Transfer Machines (ETMs). The weather changes at the drop of a hat—rain, snow, fog and sleet, all within minutes, and feet, of each other, coining trademarked words like Slice, Slurm and Spindy. It’s a strange world that Shya Scanlon creates, but it’s easy to slip into it, the familiar opening the door for the unexpected.
The opening of the book sets up this new society, quickly establishing a setting that is strange and different, but based on city and suburban life that we all should recognize:
Wind was strong-arming a small group of saplings huddled together for protection at the end of the street, snow was immobilizing a car two houses down, and the sun was punishing Helen’s front yard with an unremitting heat that reminded her of the drought they’d had that morning just before another monsoon had swept through the neighborhood, flooding a couple of storm drains and drowning all the iguanas. Helen was glad to be rid of the iguanas, frankly. They don’t get along well with dogs.
We slip into this new world order and are quickly dropped into Zara/Helen’s life. We see the boring life she has now, but we also see that society has changed, appliances powered by negative energy, forcing the populace to tap into their fears, their sorrows, as a form of currency, a means for survival, a surreal way of existing, and defining one’s worth:
Zara followed Knuckle’s gaze across the street to the line that was beginning to form at the ETM. People stood around, eyeing one another suspiciously, pockets full of old dead batteries. It was still a strange and unnatural sight: the glowing, sweating machine producing its low, ominous hum. The conduction spot, fenced-off and set back from the road. One after another, people moved inside the fence and waited for a minute, getting their bearings, then went to work.
Watching all of this, Maxwell feels a sense of power, a sense of community, as he makes sure that his job is done well, the rules are followed, and his citizen is kept safe. But what happens when this is your job to watch, to live the life vicariously? There is certain to be an intimacy, false or real, a connection:
Fundamentally, there is no single CS way, rather there are as many ways as there are practitioners, each possessing the nearly ineffable key to unlocking the mysterious bond between watcher and Watchjob. Put simply: to see through someone else’s eyes requires a leap of faith so personal that while we’re (of course) normally under strict orders to maintain utter secrecy with regard to our practice, the issue is nearly moot.
What is it that Alan Moore asks when speaking about his award-winning graphic novel, Watchmen? “Who watches the watchmen?” This is big brother of course, in one of the many possible ways that government could rule over us, could manipulate us, but not a way that many have certainly anticipated. And of course, this is where the story goes wrong, where the curtain is pulled back and the truth is revealed. If the ETMs are the means to create power, electricity, and people were able to figure out how to STOP creating Buzz, stop being worker bees, then this would threaten the way that society worked, it would be dangerous. Those kinds of anarchists, those wishing to not be harnessed, they would be trouble, and need to be tamped down. Right?
Not if they got away. Without revealing the ending, we come full circle, back to where we started, firmly entrenched in the thoughts of Maxwell, whose narrative frames this novel. He contemplates what his role actually was in the life of Zara/Helen, one of the few citizens to not produce Buzz, the energy needed to run the world. In a game of chess, while the many different pieces move around the board, all with a role to play, the pawn has to believe it is a part of the cause, the solution, and not the sacrifice it truly is:
Sometimes you’re lucky. You’re lucky or you’re just damn good, or both. Sometimes you’re inside their head in ways they don’t even understand themselves, speaking with their mouth to tell you things they didn’t even know, or don’t and likely won’t ever. Sometimes you’re so far inside them you can’t tell the difference, anymore, between yourself and your watchjob. I know we’re taught to perform each part of the job with equal enthusiasm, or indifference, but every Surveillant in the business knows that those tiny transcendences are what make the job worth doing. And I shared many such moments with Zara, perhaps even more with Helen. I was inside Zara’s feelings for her parents, and I was inside her feelings for Asseem. I waded through the placid waters of Helen’s relationship with Jack. I kidnapped Rocket with her and drove her directly into Busy’s arms. I shared her most intimate moments and I felt her fear. I knew I was good. I knew I was capturing, recording, creating her very essence – an essence that often, to my astonishment, eluded even those closest to her. The bottom line is, I was a model Citizen Surveillant. I was at the top of my game.
And that’s what the rest of Maxwell’s crew was counting on.
Forecast is a funny book, with Zara and the talking dog Rocket providing numerous occasions to laugh at the bizarre and ridiculous nature of the world. It’s a sad story, tapping into the concept of manipulation, our value as human beings, and what our identities mean to us. It’s a genre-bending book that mixes the best of science fiction, noir, fantasy, and literary prose. And it’s getting the attention and praise of talented voices like Brian Evenson, Peter Straub and Laird Hunt, who call it vital, brilliant, and frightening. There is a movement on the ground in literary fiction today that doesn’t shy away from the horrific, the fantastic, or the speculative, and Shya Scanlon, with Forecast, is at the forefront of it.
IT WAS AS IF I WERE BOTH THE FEVER-DREAMER AND THE DREAM ITSELF.
If you were paying attention in 2009 you may have seen the birthing of Forecast across the internet, from July to December, in forty-two installments. Billed as the Forecast 42 Project, this story is set in the year 2212, and is the bastard love-child of Kurt Vonnegut and Philip K. Dick, weaving elements of noir and science fiction into a humorous, touching love story, a narrative on what it means to see and be seen, to exist and yet be nothing more than a cog. Following this story across such esteemed online journals as Juked, Flatmancrooked, Keyhole, Redivider, Opium, Electric Literature, PANK, Word Riot, 3:AM Magazine, and Puerto Del Sol, it was a serial story that ended up landing Shya Scanlon a book deal at Flatmancrooked Publishing, giving hopes to many authors that the ways we publish, and get discovered, aren’t static and predictable.
Forecast is the story of Zara, a woman who evolves (or devolves) into Helen, changing from a spirited, independent girl, into a Stepford wife, her life a dull suburban waste, married to Jack, an oblivious idiot, undeserving of her spirit. Watching over this is Maxwell Point, a Citizen Surveillant, a man who loses himself in the process of watching her, both an essential, and irrelevant, part of her life. There is of course the talking dog, Rocket, who often provides comic relief. There is Asseem, her rebellious boyfriend, CEO of Street Cred, Inc. There is the split personality of Blain/Busy, who may be more than he seems, good cop, bad cop, all in one body. Or is it two? Her parents, the professor, Knuckle and his Dirty Dogs fast food chain, it’s a full cast of miscreants and prophets, players and pawns. And this all takes place in Seattle, where in this possible future, electricity is gone, power created by negative energy, farmed by Emotional Transfer Machines (ETMs). The weather changes at the drop of a hat—rain, snow, fog and sleet, all within minutes, and feet, of each other, coining trademarked words like Slice, Slurm and Spindy. It’s a strange world that Shya Scanlon creates, but it’s easy to slip into it, the familiar opening the door for the unexpected.
The opening of the book sets up this new society, quickly establishing a setting that is strange and different, but based on city and suburban life that we all should recognize:
Wind was strong-arming a small group of saplings huddled together for protection at the end of the street, snow was immobilizing a car two houses down, and the sun was punishing Helen’s front yard with an unremitting heat that reminded her of the drought they’d had that morning just before another monsoon had swept through the neighborhood, flooding a couple of storm drains and drowning all the iguanas. Helen was glad to be rid of the iguanas, frankly. They don’t get along well with dogs.
We slip into this new world order and are quickly dropped into Zara/Helen’s life. We see the boring life she has now, but we also see that society has changed, appliances powered by negative energy, forcing the populace to tap into their fears, their sorrows, as a form of currency, a means for survival, a surreal way of existing, and defining one’s worth:
Zara followed Knuckle’s gaze across the street to the line that was beginning to form at the ETM. People stood around, eyeing one another suspiciously, pockets full of old dead batteries. It was still a strange and unnatural sight: the glowing, sweating machine producing its low, ominous hum. The conduction spot, fenced-off and set back from the road. One after another, people moved inside the fence and waited for a minute, getting their bearings, then went to work.
Watching all of this, Maxwell feels a sense of power, a sense of community, as he makes sure that his job is done well, the rules are followed, and his citizen is kept safe. But what happens when this is your job to watch, to live the life vicariously? There is certain to be an intimacy, false or real, a connection:
Fundamentally, there is no single CS way, rather there are as many ways as there are practitioners, each possessing the nearly ineffable key to unlocking the mysterious bond between watcher and Watchjob. Put simply: to see through someone else’s eyes requires a leap of faith so personal that while we’re (of course) normally under strict orders to maintain utter secrecy with regard to our practice, the issue is nearly moot.
What is it that Alan Moore asks when speaking about his award-winning graphic novel, Watchmen? “Who watches the watchmen?” This is big brother of course, in one of the many possible ways that government could rule over us, could manipulate us, but not a way that many have certainly anticipated. And of course, this is where the story goes wrong, where the curtain is pulled back and the truth is revealed. If the ETMs are the means to create power, electricity, and people were able to figure out how to STOP creating Buzz, stop being worker bees, then this would threaten the way that society worked, it would be dangerous. Those kinds of anarchists, those wishing to not be harnessed, they would be trouble, and need to be tamped down. Right?
Not if they got away. Without revealing the ending, we come full circle, back to where we started, firmly entrenched in the thoughts of Maxwell, whose narrative frames this novel. He contemplates what his role actually was in the life of Zara/Helen, one of the few citizens to not produce Buzz, the energy needed to run the world. In a game of chess, while the many different pieces move around the board, all with a role to play, the pawn has to believe it is a part of the cause, the solution, and not the sacrifice it truly is:
Sometimes you’re lucky. You’re lucky or you’re just damn good, or both. Sometimes you’re inside their head in ways they don’t even understand themselves, speaking with their mouth to tell you things they didn’t even know, or don’t and likely won’t ever. Sometimes you’re so far inside them you can’t tell the difference, anymore, between yourself and your watchjob. I know we’re taught to perform each part of the job with equal enthusiasm, or indifference, but every Surveillant in the business knows that those tiny transcendences are what make the job worth doing. And I shared many such moments with Zara, perhaps even more with Helen. I was inside Zara’s feelings for her parents, and I was inside her feelings for Asseem. I waded through the placid waters of Helen’s relationship with Jack. I kidnapped Rocket with her and drove her directly into Busy’s arms. I shared her most intimate moments and I felt her fear. I knew I was good. I knew I was capturing, recording, creating her very essence – an essence that often, to my astonishment, eluded even those closest to her. The bottom line is, I was a model Citizen Surveillant. I was at the top of my game.
And that’s what the rest of Maxwell’s crew was counting on.
Forecast is a funny book, with Zara and the talking dog Rocket providing numerous occasions to laugh at the bizarre and ridiculous nature of the world. It’s a sad story, tapping into the concept of manipulation, our value as human beings, and what our identities mean to us. It’s a genre-bending book that mixes the best of science fiction, noir, fantasy, and literary prose. And it’s getting the attention and praise of talented voices like Brian Evenson, Peter Straub and Laird Hunt, who call it vital, brilliant, and frightening. There is a movement on the ground in literary fiction today that doesn’t shy away from the horrific, the fantastic, or the speculative, and Shya Scanlon, with Forecast, is at the forefront of it.
January 24, 2011
Review copy from author
Housewives paid to watch television ads? Weather forecasts that differ from house to house? Electricity that is generated by negative human emotions? Wearing special masks when you go outside to block the Citizen Surveillance team's ability to "watch" you? This is the world into which author Shya Scanlon thrusts his readers when they crack the cover of his novel Forecast.
Released nearly a month ago by FlatManCrooked, Forecast is an "actionable narrative" set in 2212, written by Lead Citizen Surveillant Maxwell Point, who is currently serving a 6 month probation after his Watchjob mysteriously disappears.
Ok, in plain terms - This is a futurist novel about a woman named Helen who, unbeknownst to her, has been the target of a surveillance organization, and her sudden disappearance after leaving her cheating husband in search of her old boyfriend.
Our narrator, Maxwell, has been observing Helen's every move for the past few years. Floating between chapters, we slowly come to understand why. In a world that is no longer running on electricity, everyone has learned the essential process of Emotion Transfer (aka Buzz). Buzz, the transferal of negative human emotions to inanimate objects, fuels everything from batteries and lamps to blenders and cars. Helen, it appears, has the unique inability to create Buzz - she cannot generate her own electricity - and when she was younger had taught her old boyfriend how to withhold his own.
Currently married to a famous weatherman who is cheating on her with her best friend Joan, Helen finally decides to pick up and leave, kidnapping Joan's dog Rocket, and heads back to her old town in search of her ex-boyfriend. On the way, the focus of the novel shifts from whacky futuristic technology to a dirty underworld of voyeurism and REMO-addicts, as Maxwell watches Helen meet up with a shady actor by the name of Busy, where she hides out in an underworld amusement park, and ultimately vanishes.
While not an easy book to categorize, fans of futuristic, 'big brother', science fiction novels will find lots to love with this one! With twists and turns around every corner, this novel will keep lovers of detective noir guessing right up until the end.
It was interesting to watch Maxwell battle his unhealthy voyeuristic obsession with Helen. He struggled to keep himself emotionally removed from his subject yet continued to find himself feeling a strong attachment to her that mirrored a fatherly sense of responsibility for what happened, or may happen, to her.
As with any novel that deals with one form of surveillance or another (Orwell's 1984 comes immediately to mind) every author must ask himself "how much is too much" when divulging just what is being observed. Shya takes the high road and sticks only to the information that is needed to tell his story. I won't lie... I was waiting for the novel to share a little nose or wedgie picking here and there. You know, those things that people do when they think they are alone and no one can see them. Come on, you guys... you know what I'm talking about. Hell, I've seen some of you doing it... But I digress. The question is simply, what portions of the surveillance should be kept in, and what should be cut out? What makes it just realistic enough, and at what point does it become too much? And is it possible to not put in enough?
This also calls into question the morals and ethics of the "Citizen Surveillant" (or C.S.). I can only imagine how God-like Maxwell must have felt, sitting there observing every single thing Helen was doing, from heating up her morning cup of coffee to taking a shower to clipping her toenails. Did he ever give her some privacy? Does looking away even count as privacy, when you can choose to observe someone at any moment? Towards the end of the novel Maxwell found himself in a position, after years of being the one who "watched', to being on the other end of the camera, or whatever it was that they were able to observe through. So how do things change when one goes from watcher to watched? How does knowing that you are being watched change the way you behave? What does it feel like to be under the microscope like that? And can you ever go back to watching someone again, after knowing what it felt like to be watched?
This novel (which shares moments of similarity to The Truman Show, in which Jim Carrey's character unknowingly lives his entire life in a reality television show) contains people who live their lives somewhat aware that "someone" - as in the big eye in sky - is watching, but never quite knowing if they are the "target" of a specific C.S. They think that the AS-Mask is protecting them, when in reality they are not. Does Helen ever find out that she was targeted by Maxwell's group? Would she have lived a different life, had she known?
Sound like something you might be interested in reading?
Check out the full review here: http://thenextbestbookblog.blogspot.c...
Housewives paid to watch television ads? Weather forecasts that differ from house to house? Electricity that is generated by negative human emotions? Wearing special masks when you go outside to block the Citizen Surveillance team's ability to "watch" you? This is the world into which author Shya Scanlon thrusts his readers when they crack the cover of his novel Forecast.
Released nearly a month ago by FlatManCrooked, Forecast is an "actionable narrative" set in 2212, written by Lead Citizen Surveillant Maxwell Point, who is currently serving a 6 month probation after his Watchjob mysteriously disappears.
Ok, in plain terms - This is a futurist novel about a woman named Helen who, unbeknownst to her, has been the target of a surveillance organization, and her sudden disappearance after leaving her cheating husband in search of her old boyfriend.
Our narrator, Maxwell, has been observing Helen's every move for the past few years. Floating between chapters, we slowly come to understand why. In a world that is no longer running on electricity, everyone has learned the essential process of Emotion Transfer (aka Buzz). Buzz, the transferal of negative human emotions to inanimate objects, fuels everything from batteries and lamps to blenders and cars. Helen, it appears, has the unique inability to create Buzz - she cannot generate her own electricity - and when she was younger had taught her old boyfriend how to withhold his own.
Currently married to a famous weatherman who is cheating on her with her best friend Joan, Helen finally decides to pick up and leave, kidnapping Joan's dog Rocket, and heads back to her old town in search of her ex-boyfriend. On the way, the focus of the novel shifts from whacky futuristic technology to a dirty underworld of voyeurism and REMO-addicts, as Maxwell watches Helen meet up with a shady actor by the name of Busy, where she hides out in an underworld amusement park, and ultimately vanishes.
While not an easy book to categorize, fans of futuristic, 'big brother', science fiction novels will find lots to love with this one! With twists and turns around every corner, this novel will keep lovers of detective noir guessing right up until the end.
It was interesting to watch Maxwell battle his unhealthy voyeuristic obsession with Helen. He struggled to keep himself emotionally removed from his subject yet continued to find himself feeling a strong attachment to her that mirrored a fatherly sense of responsibility for what happened, or may happen, to her.
As with any novel that deals with one form of surveillance or another (Orwell's 1984 comes immediately to mind) every author must ask himself "how much is too much" when divulging just what is being observed. Shya takes the high road and sticks only to the information that is needed to tell his story. I won't lie... I was waiting for the novel to share a little nose or wedgie picking here and there. You know, those things that people do when they think they are alone and no one can see them. Come on, you guys... you know what I'm talking about. Hell, I've seen some of you doing it... But I digress. The question is simply, what portions of the surveillance should be kept in, and what should be cut out? What makes it just realistic enough, and at what point does it become too much? And is it possible to not put in enough?
This also calls into question the morals and ethics of the "Citizen Surveillant" (or C.S.). I can only imagine how God-like Maxwell must have felt, sitting there observing every single thing Helen was doing, from heating up her morning cup of coffee to taking a shower to clipping her toenails. Did he ever give her some privacy? Does looking away even count as privacy, when you can choose to observe someone at any moment? Towards the end of the novel Maxwell found himself in a position, after years of being the one who "watched', to being on the other end of the camera, or whatever it was that they were able to observe through. So how do things change when one goes from watcher to watched? How does knowing that you are being watched change the way you behave? What does it feel like to be under the microscope like that? And can you ever go back to watching someone again, after knowing what it felt like to be watched?
This novel (which shares moments of similarity to The Truman Show, in which Jim Carrey's character unknowingly lives his entire life in a reality television show) contains people who live their lives somewhat aware that "someone" - as in the big eye in sky - is watching, but never quite knowing if they are the "target" of a specific C.S. They think that the AS-Mask is protecting them, when in reality they are not. Does Helen ever find out that she was targeted by Maxwell's group? Would she have lived a different life, had she known?
Sound like something you might be interested in reading?
Check out the full review here: http://thenextbestbookblog.blogspot.c...
May 14, 2011
What a strange, highly imaginative and compelling ride. At first I believed I was reading a straight ahead scifi plot but gradually the whole secondary narrative undercurrent of the intense connection between writer and his characters became clear. And just like the writer, we have to leave the characters he's created before we're entirely ready and if the writer has done his job we'll never be ready and Shya Scanlon has done his job superbly.
September 8, 2013
Scanlon definitely writes a gripping story through an imaginative dystopian world. He mixes a number of different things I wouldn't have imagined to mix well together, but he handles it all marvelously. There was never a moment I wasn't interested and never a moment I wasn't intrigued.
August 9, 2012
Really liked a lot this book, but there are a lot of cutesy, tongue-in-cheek futuristic touches that bothered me. Like, trademarking "Neighborhoods" - to point out our increasingly consumer culture was... ehh... Just reminded me of the parts of Super Sad True Love Story that I didn't like.
But the characters were great. Zara/Helen is such a strong main character that you enjoy every moment with her.
And there's this fourth-wall breakage that was pretty genius: narrator of the story is part of the Citizen Surveillance team, so you get the actions in the story, plus his (Max) interjections, which creates this really sweet third/first-person hybrid narrative. This gets interesting toward the end, when the two narratives become more integrated.
The ending (at least literally) was a little abrupt and I don't think it was entirely earned - it almost reads as an epilogue. But I really appreciated where all the characters ended up, so form really takes backseat to overall effect.
But the characters were great. Zara/Helen is such a strong main character that you enjoy every moment with her.
And there's this fourth-wall breakage that was pretty genius: narrator of the story is part of the Citizen Surveillance team, so you get the actions in the story, plus his (Max) interjections, which creates this really sweet third/first-person hybrid narrative. This gets interesting toward the end, when the two narratives become more integrated.
The ending (at least literally) was a little abrupt and I don't think it was entirely earned - it almost reads as an epilogue. But I really appreciated where all the characters ended up, so form really takes backseat to overall effect.
March 22, 2011
He is a good writer. He will write better books. He ends it fairly well, at least.
July 16, 2013
I really enjoyed it, but weird!! LOL!!
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews