Kevin George (1)

They shave a small spot on the back of your head and insert a needle. They sample matter found deep inside you, delicate and evaporative. They run the tests, and with in a short time, Life Inc can tell you the precise time and date you will die. As it turns out, along side the creation of highly pollutive freeways in the sky, leaking gasses and forcing the public into oxygen masks, Life Inc has been able to analyze and validate your life force.

In the opening, the mastermind and genius who show more built Life Inc is dying. He travels to his lab, knowing his death clock is running. He knows that his life force has dwindled. He has a plan, to capture the final grain of life as it leaves his body, and follow it 'home'. He has proven life force, now he will prove the human soul.

10 short years later, Life Inc airs a commercial that offers the ultimate gift to humanity. At the cost of one year of life energy, you can spend 24 hours alone in open physical contact and communication with a dead loved one.

It is interesting how much of a struggle the fictional world has in this novel, dealing with the existence of a soul. Scientifically proven life force. Can you imagine? Science and religion speaking in like terms of semi-intangible existence.. I could only hope for the marriage of these two factiosn, but predictably, the world of Life Inc still fights this fight, of science being a starved for attention meddlesome god debasing entity and religion being a starved for attention meddlesome fear monger.


This book ranks in the realm of amazing. It has complex characters, interesting science, well written action sequences, and a highly polished writing style. Add in some pulp fictionesque mystery. At $2.99, this book is a steal. Seriously..

Kevin George seems like a fairly prolific self published author. With a mature writing style, 4 series and this single standalone book under his belt, it is nice to see that he has fully resolved all of the complaint generating errors that too commonly plague self pubs. This book was effectively error free and a really great plot line with basically zero plot holes.

Can you ask for more?

IMPORTANT

Do not read comments on amazon. There are some dickbags sharing open spoilers in the small handful of negative critique. I dont know why people have to be like that.

File Size: 1434 KB

Print Length: 530 pages

ASIN: B008ABPD8K show less

(A free copy was received for review after nominating this book during its Kindle Scout run)

Genre : Character-driven, door-stopper dystopia with a dark fantasy narrative treatment. Maybe reminiscent of K.J. Parker's Loredan or Engineer trilogies.

Loved : The (probably post-apocalyptic) world, the 'lava-punk' city, the play on cold/heat light/darkness, the different societies that grew within its sections, some of the mysteries that are hinted at. A major one is progressively partly unveiled show more in this book 1 but others remain (What happened to Section 4 ? Who are the sky people ? Are there other survivors beyond the icy wastes ?). Most of the characters are engaging.

Disliked : This is not quite for me for more or less the same reason the other trilogies named earlier are not. You have to love slow-motion character train wrecks.
At least in this first book there are very few external influences on the plot so most of the momentum comes from King Edmond's waffling between roughly three states of mind. The palette includes self-deluded 'enlightened' autocrat, iron-fisted tyrant, and slave of his very dark urges. And that's about it. Nearly everything stems from there, from how the two other characters closest to him try to cope and come on top (or simply survive), and how in turn it affects everyone else. show less

Despite the action at the start, where Flea is being bullied at school until he finds himself with strange powers when it snows, this story takes a while to get going. That is to say, once Flea gets whisked off to the North Pole the action really starts! Exactly why Flea is there, why he is so talented and why he is lumped with two seeming failures who have never graduated from Elf School forms the mystery at the heart of the book, and one that is only slightly revealed by the end. But then show more as the series implies, he has five Christmases to work out the answer!

The story is well written, and full of wonderfully imaginative problems, punishments, and nasty situations as well as fun things and inventive means of transport. I admire an author who comes up with filling someone's room with snowballs as a bully's way of getting at them. I did find it irritating that any onomatopaeic words were italicised, sometimes in the same sentence as words where italics were used for stress. I don't think the wind howling or the snowball whooshing adds anything, and to me it detracted from the readability.

But I did enjoy the story, and felt the characters were well established. The wider plot is nicely introduced, and left at a very nice point so that I want to find out what happens next while being satisfied by the end of this story. A cleverly plotted book with plenty of twists and seasonal references that I'm sure all the family will enjoy.

P.S. Having started by saying it takes a while to get going, I will now backtrack and say it probably doesn't take any more time than it took Hagrid to turn up and say, "You're a wizard, Harry." Maybe it was more predictable from the descriptions of Flea's problems? Maybe it was because there was a Prologue? I don't know. I do know that I'm looking forward to the next book in the series.

This is one of my 4.5 star reads. But I've marked it in the 5 because although I wont read it again, I will read the next one! show less

Overall, I thought the book was pretty well-written and would have given it four stars if it hadn't been for the way it ended. If this were a young adult series, the ending wouldn't have been so bad. But I think it's supposed to be a middle grade series, and the ending (in my opinion) is way too dark for that age level - especially those on the younger end of it.

I read it with my kids (17, 14, and 10) and all three were disturbed by the ending. I may finish the series on my own to see what show more happens, but I doubt I'll finish reading it with the kids. show less