Children of the New World
Alexander Weinstein
In the near future, social media implants are normal, and memories can be virtually implanted. Sex, souls and ass are currency and children can be deleted from life or have their insides fail. This collection of short stories is an eye-opening horror that will leave you thinking about the implications of technology long into the night.
The short stories lapped in with each other, the world felt complete and despite the short stories being, well, short, I felt satisfied after reading each one. I’m not sure that I would be able to comfortably read a whole novel of this, nor what storyline could go with it. There is just so many disparate things happening that it seems impossible to get
I want to suggest this novel for others to read, and perhaps lend it to a friend or two, but I’m also hesitant because I’m not sure most people are going to be accepting of most of the ideas. It’s out there alright, and I think it should be read. It’s another level of “1984” (with the same sort of Big Brother ideas).
Oh, I wasn’t sure whether to give this 4 stars or 5 stars. Normally I wouldn’t go in for a book of short stories, but it really was fantastic.
Text Publishing | 1st December 2016 | AU $22.99 | Paperback
Personally, I think the blurb on GoodReads gives far too much away. You start to get inklings of something being wrong with this generation of Queens as you are reading, and to have them all knocked away before you even start reading would be a serious detriment to your enjoyment of the novel.
In the tradition of ‘The Day My Bum Went Psycho’ and ‘The Adventures of Captain Underpants’, this novel contains bums, snot and disgusting boys! If you have a reader that is into that kind of thing, they are going to love this novel.
The novel’s characters didn’t fill out for me. I remember Sean’s name. That’s it. I had to recheck the blurb to remember the other characters, even the ‘main’ character, Cole.
Sabriel has always been an established Abhorson in my eyes, but here we see Lirael grow into what she should be. When she returns to the Glacier where she grew up, it is obvious that there has been some serious character growth coming on. We get to see more of that in this novel too, as well as Sameth (who I hold a personal soft spot for) and Nick.
This novel lets its main character develop the way I would want, but could have left a bit more time for other characters to put their own 2 cents in. I would have liked to have more of everything, the world as it was many years before the rest of the series, and the state of society.
Bad guys never give up do they? This novel offers a satisfying plot with twists that I certainly didn’t see coming. Bam! Nothing like having sociopaths on the loose. Even if some successful scientists are likely also sociopaths. The ultimate question is whether removing those genes will be sustainable and what might happen next.
It was a bit convenient how there just happened to be 4 brilliant ‘munies that could be used to help design the maze. Then again, the whole thing was amazingly orchestrated by WICKED. Not having read The Scorch Trials, I didn’t know that there had been two communities in the mazes (male-only and female-only).
This book had me hooked, right up until the last three chapters. I couldn’t fathom what might happen next, but it wasn’t what eventually came out as the truth! For me, the truth didn’t hold through what had happened in the rest of the book, despite the hints that would have supported this outcome.
I spent a lot of the novel being confused by who was who and which sides people were on. I seriously needed a character list to keep things straight, and I kept flicking back to the Prologue in the hopes I would be able to work out who the ‘bad guys’ were.