The Lightbringers (edition 2012)

They're Watching You Right Now!

The Orwellian level of constant surveillance and thought control in this book is enough to make anyone living in Oceania blush.

Remember Nineteen Eighty-Four's torture scene in Room 101? Now image if a group of freedom fighters had kicked the door in and rescued Smith from O'Brien's thought control - That's what you have with THE LIGHTBRINGERS.

Get your copy before this book is banned by Madame President's NEW AMERICA and her legions of 'Feel Good' Operators come knocking on YOUR door! ( )

Not good, not good at all.
Written like a YA-Book, no background information to make the plot more believable, characters without depth and a magical happy end.
An interesting idea twisted into a waste of time.
Sorry for the harsh words but I really tried to be nice - and failed.

I received and am now reviewing The Lightbringers through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers Program. The concept of the book very much caught my interest as I love a good dystopian. However, I never really could get into. Everything happened way to fast with really no background information. Though the main characters story did slowly unfold I felt the reader needed to know more about the world around him. I was also thrown off by Nick's sociopathic ways. I can see how the author wanted to show the difference between President Martha's credo of living life in a constant state of happiness, wether forced or not, and Nick / the undergrounds credo of living life however they wanted even if it was violent. But to me his actions were so drastic they became instantly unbelievable. The one thing that I truly enjoyed were the proclomations on how to live your life according to President Marth and the passages from 9 Lives by Watts fromt he Underground. They showed the polar opposition between the two factions. ( )

This book was received and read as part of the LibraryThing Early Reviewers Program. I am going to review it without revealing any spoilers because the story needs them to work in this book.

This book The Lightbringers by H. C. H. Ritz is an interesting take on societal change.
While I enjoyed the story, it was a bit too simple, almost a young adult novel with too much violence to get it included as such.
I would have preferred a bit more back story on the How and Why things changed, but instead we must content ourselves with the fallout from the change.

I would recommend this book only to those that enjoy a dystopian type reads. ( )

If you enjoy dystopian novels and don't mind descriptive R-rated violence in your books, then I give this one a soft recommendation.

Possible Spoilers Ahead.

One of the main takeaways from The Lightbringers by H. C. H. Ritz is that a full life is composed from a spectrum of experiences and emotions, both good and bad and everything in between. And the more that equilibrium is off, the more life will forcefully attempt to restore the balance. This is a good framework for a story, but this particular story is only a so-so execution of that idea.

From the start, I didn't quite believe the premise. Rather than being developed in detail, the backstory seems to serve only as a starting point. A lot more verisimilitude is needed. On the plus side, the characters are varied and interesting. Nick is a narcissistic sociopath, and his actions nearly brought me out of the story each time he gleefully tortured someone, but overall his arc holds together. ( )