Paradigm by Ceri A Lowe

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Following a major climatic catastrophe, the surviving citizens of London have taken to the underground, living in a reinvented society where people are regularly put in cryogenic sleep until needed. Births are carefully controlled and life is constrained by the needs of the greater good. Carter Warren is born into the world after the end, called on to fulfill his destiny as a contender for the role of Controller General. However in the years he has spent in deep freeze, things have changed and the world he left may no longer be the world he left behind...

Paradigm is a new entry into the extremely popular post-apocalyptic young adult scene, the latest in a long line of books that trace their DNA back through Divergent to the Hunger Games. Set in a world where climat change has forced the human race underground, it tells a dual story of two young people - one, a young girl called Alice Davenport, struggles to survive in the world left behind in the immediate aftermath of the Storms, while the other, a young man named Carter, lives almost a hundred years later in a London that has adapted to the post-Storms world. As we follow both stories concurrently, each begins to inform the other, creating a patchwork of two tales that combine to give us a complete view of what is going on while leaving a lot of questions unanswered. Unfortunately, only one of these threads really worked for me - the Alice storyline - leaving the pathwork lopsided and at times difficult to read.

While Alice's story is a great exploration of a post-apocalyptic world in the immediate aftermath (think Stephen King's The Stand just after the virus hits), Carter's storyline is a rehash of what has been seen a thousand times before in recent years with this subgenre. While I enjoyed Hunger Games and Divergent, to name the two most well known entries in the post-apocalyptic YA field, Paradigm may have been a step too far for me. While Alice's story was interesting, it did not provide any majorly original or insightful additions to this genre, while Carter's seemed to be a paint by numbers exploration of a tyranical uber-state.

The book left me frustrated by the end, which is more of a commentary on the plot than the writing - Ceri Lowe knows how to write a gripping story but in this case the skill of the writer was unsufficient to get over the obstacles created by the basic story. Although I didn't skim read, the book did not keep my attention in any major way: I found myself putting it aside without any real intention to pick it up again, so it took me quite a while to finish it.

Paradigm is the start of a series but I very much doubt I will pick up the sequel. While Alice's storyline was an interesting one that maintained my attention through much of its course, the Carter storyline lost me completely. Still, the writing was good and it is clear that Ceri Lowe has skills. I gave Paradigm 2,5 motionless Arks out of 5.

Peacemaker by Marianne de Pierres

 

 

Gold faded to purple and then a dying red. Sunset from the butte.

In the last open natural space in the world, Virgin 'Ginny' Jackson works as a park ranger, charged with protecting the natural habitat from anyone who might wish to encroach on its borders. When she stumbles upon a murder, though, Ginny finds herself on the wrong end of official police interest. Her situation is made even more complex by the presence of a United States Marshall apparently seconded to the Rangers, a Marshall who seems to be able to see the invisible eagle that Ginny has always believed was only a delusion...

I had heard a lot about Marianne de Pierres in connection with her Parrish Plessis series and the space opera quadrology Sentients of Orion. Although I never got around to reading either of these series, the blurbs and covers had definitely put de Pierres on my radar and so when I saw that she had a new book in a new series coming out this year I decided this would be the perfect opportunity to have a read. When the book was made available on Netgalley - without needing approval to get it - I jumped at the chance and added it to this month's To Read List so that I could get through it before the release date. The setting sounded interesting, as did the mixture of future cyberpunk elements with what sounded like an urban fantasy type main character and plot.

Peacemaker takes place in an undisclosed future year, one where huge arc-like cities cover the Earth and a single open park area remains in modern-day Australia, policed and protected by a group of Park Rangers. Our main character, Ginny, is one of these, and she has a personal stake in the job - her father was one of the founders of the Park and he lost his life soon after it opened. When Ginny stumbles upon a murder within the park, then, it is in her direct interest to see that the murder does not escalate and harm the place she is charged with protecting. Things are made more complicated, though, when she is assigned to work with a US Marshall and she begins to see an invisible eagle that she has not seen since she was a girl, an eagle she has spent her adulthood convincing herself that she imagined. When the Marshall reveals that he can see it too, and that he has one of these Mythos himself, Ginny is drawn into a worldwide conspiracy.

I really wanted to like Peacemaker more than I did. The mixture of urban fantasy with a post-cyberpunk type world sounded intriguing and it is certainly a nice twist on both. However, this very setting is where the book was really let down for me. I never got the feeling of a clear-cut world around Ginny. The Park does not appear as much as would seem expected given its prominence in the blurb, while the city around it is a dull array of names of districts, none of which have a clearly defined sense of place. The level of technology was another disappointment - while we are dealing with a future far enough away from our own to have allowed for the construction and development of these huge cities that have extended so far as to leave hardly any free open spaces left, there was little other obvious technological development. Every time one of the characters uses a cellphone or a tablet, it created a dissonance for me that yanked me right out of the book. Surely, at the rate at which technology changes in the real world, by the time we reach these huge megalopolises, we would have moved beyond the same hardware we all use today. This of course may be my own personal peeve and your own mileage may vary.

On the other hand, de Pierres has created a nice cast of characters. All of them are multidimensional, affording for some strong, snappy dialogue between the main characters. Ginny herself is a good, strong female character, but there was nothing in her personality that drew me to her or allowed me to create an emotional attachment. I did not feel for her as she struggled against the various difficulties she encountered and because of that it was easy for me to disconnect from the plot and put the book down.

In terms of the plot, there were some very well done twists throughout and the way the book concluded affords a glimpse of some interesting ideas planned for future volumes. The romantic subplots were well done, believable and not in any way diverting attention from what was happening around them. However the mystery that Ginny is investigating never engaged and I found myself skimming through certain parts, waiting for the story to take off. Unfortunately, for this reader at least, it never did.

An interesting twist on the urban fantasy model that combines two genres, Peacemaker lacked a distinct setting and a captivating plot. Although the well-rounded, interesting characters made up for both of those slightly, I found it difficult to get to the end, skimming through and looking for something to catch my attention. I had high hopes for the book from everything I had heard about de Pierres up until now, but I was left disappointed. I would definitely try another book by the author in a different world, but I very much doubt I would pick up the sequel to Peacemaker. I gave Peacemaker 2.5 pistols out of 5.

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Notes From the Internet Apocalypse by Wayne Gladstone

When the great crash happened it was nothing like we feared. There was no panic. No tears. Mostly just slammed fists and swearing. The Internet was down, and hitting refresh didn't work. "Ctrl, alt, delete" was also useless. No one had Internet. Anywhere.

In Notes From The Internet Apocalypse, the net has stopped working. As an entire generation of Twitterites, Facebook afficianados, Chatroulette zombies and redditers descend into the street to find some way of recreating the online experience in the real world, three unlikely heroes join together and set off on a quest to bring the wifi back...

Like anyone who has a blog or lives online, the thought of the Internet vanishing leaves me in a cold sweat! J A couple of days without connecting is difficult enough, but to have no more access whatsoever to all my favourite sites and the constant background noise of the Worldwide Web is a terrifying thought. One that Wayne Gladstone takes and runs with. When I saw the book on a rundown of sf and fantasy novels released this year, I was immediately taken in both by the clever cover and the great blurb. Unfortunately the book wasn’t as much of a touchdown than I had hoped.

And yet it started so well... As the book opens we are introduced to Gladstone the narrator who proceeds to tell us about this world a tiny jump, skip and hop away from our own, where overnight the internet has stopped working. In these early pages, the sheer inventiveness and clever humour that Mr Gladstone brings to creating his world carried me along. From Youtube zombies who force real cats to do trick after trick until they die, to twitter addicts who only speak in tweets, the bitingly dark humour works. While snorting at the outrageous extent people go to to recapture the online world offline, there is still a certain uneasiness as you wonder just how farfetched a lot of this really is.

Unfortunately, this inventiveness did not necessarily translate to either the plot or the characters. Gladstone, our narrator, takes a very long time to take on any kind of active role in what is happening, beyond stumbling around sex clubs looking for his friends. Those two friends are never clearly painted and it is difficult to tell exactly how real they are nor what their actual goals are in relation to Gladstone.

The book kept me going though, through the murky middle parts and towards what seemed to be building towards an interesting, even exciting end. This is where Mr Gladstone the writer lost me completely, though. Awash in a series of confusing events and cypher explanations, not at all helped by the detachment of the narrator who never quite connected emotionally (with me at least), I ended the book completely lost. I still have no idea what the ending was and what it was supposed to mean, nor how much of it was real and how much we are supposed to believe went on in Gladstone the narrator’s mind.

A fabulously inventine and ironic look at our world and just how we might react to the loss of what has become such an important part of our lives we can’t imagine living without it, Notes From the Internet Apocalypse failed to grab my attention in terms of character or plot and left me confused and irritated by the ending. I gave this 2.5 /b/tards out of 5.

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