Review: Perfect World

Book: Perfect World

Author: Shari Sakurai

Page Count: 332

Amazon

My Rating: 3.5 TURTLES: A very enjoyable read, I recommend you check it out.

Description:
London, 2115

It is the year 2115 and the world is very different. With climate changes, natural disasters and war shaping the landscape, England has become a nation made up of several super cities and wasteland in between. 

Eric Rawlins is a genetically engineered superhero created by the London Security Agency (L.S.A) to defend and protect the city against both national and international threats. With his superior abilities, celebrity status and beautiful girlfriend, Eric appears to have the perfect life. However, it is an illusion created by the L.S.A in order to control him.

Eric's nemesis is the charismatic Adam Larimore. The only son of billionaire business tycoon Victor Larimore, Adam is gifted with a genius level IQ as well as the same longevity as Eric. 

When the actions of the L.S.A throw the two of them together Eric finds himself questioning everything that he has ever known as well as discovering the true course of events that led to Adam turning to a life of crime. As they become closer Eric realises that the L.S.A may be the real threat to London. But can he trust Adam or is he part of Adam’s plan for revenge against those who have wronged him?

Review:
I loved the premise of this book. It’s sort of Gattaca meets Captive Prince, so I was really excited to see what would happen. Although Perfect World didn’t fully live up to my expectations and hopes, it’s still an intriguing, fast-paced science fiction tale that I recommend you check out.

First of all, what’s not to love about the “hero who realizes his perfect world isn’t what it’s cracked up to be and is forced to fall in with his enemy” trope? Eric Rawlins is too naïve to see the corruption around him until it is shoved in his face, but he clings to his morals no matter what is going around him. From the get-go, I just felt for Eric and the situation he is in.

I also really enjoyed how Adam Larimore’as character was revealed to the reader. I suspected there was more to him than what met the eye, but even I wasn’t able to predict what was really going on in his head or what he would do next all the time. He could still get on my nerves sometimes, but despite that I still found myself rooting for him.

While there was a lot I liked about Perfect World, there were aspects that fell flat for me. For one thing, I felt like Adam and Eric’s relationship was way rushed. They go from being enemies to being in love in, like, a day, and I didn’t quite buy the fact that they’d fallen in love over the times they’d met as enemies. I could understand that to explain attraction, but not love. Instalove may not bother other people, but it’s kind of a pet peeve of mine.

A smaller thing that I wasn’t a huge fan of was the constant reference to Eric as “the hero” and Adam as “the villain.” I get it. Writing “Eric said this,” “Eric thought this,” “Eric was this” can get repetitive and it is nice to find other ways of referring to people other than their names. However, using “hero” and “villain” came off as cartoonish and silly. It’s made abundantly clear that the LSA and even Eric for the first half of the book (at least) sees Eric as the hero and Adam as the villain, it’s unnecessary to spell it out like that.

While not perfect, Perfect World is still an entertaining read that is absolutely worth your time. I’ll be excited to learn more about Adam Larimore in the next book released in the series, Adam, that follows the title character’s perspective.

Disclosure: this post contains links to an affiliate program (Amazon), for which I receive a few cents if you make purchases. 

Blog Tour: Cordial Killing

Cordial Killing (A Backyard Farming Mystery)

Anne is excited for the opening of the Brandywine Inn. Kandi and Hope are her partners in the bed-and-breakfast in Carolan Springs, Colorado, where they also provide homesteading and herbal workshops for guests.
As soon as the guests arrive, it’s plain that the five old college chums have bad blood between them. When Anne finds a threatening note, it's clear that someone is out for revenge. Then they find a guest dead. At first, the death appears to be natural, but suspicions begin to grow.
When a blizzard threatens the Inn, will it trap them all with a killer and no way out?
Cordial Killing is a classic who-dun-it with a twist. Set in the fictional small town of Carolan Springs, you will enjoy an armchair getaway into beautiful Colorado.
Buy link 

 

About the Author:

Vikki’s first words were “I get it!” This attitude became her life-long mantra to always go after what she wants. It also helped her realize her desire to help others get what they really want out of life.

After spending years as a registered interior designer, Vikki began to write. While writing for periodicals, Vikki found herself on assignment interviewing publishers in Colorado Springs. It wasn’t long before the natural beauty of Colorado captured her heart.

After moving to Colorado, Vikki  worked with nonprofits. However, she soon realized she needed more autonomy in her work.

Vikki started her own business as a nonprofit consultant and grant writer. She has helped nonprofits across the U.S. to receive millions of dollars for their work. Yet, she realized doing one thing wouldn’t satisfy her for long.

Vikki became a Work Quilter™ combining her many passions to create multiple income streams. She started speaking and teaching adults on myriad and diverse topics around her knowledge, skills and passions.   She's taught and spoken on Creative Writing, Design for Heart and Home, Fundraising Fundamentals , Suburban Homesteading, Permaculture, How to Get What You Really Want, and of course, Work Quilting. Two words that continually appear on instructor and speaker feedback forms are "engaging" and "knowledgeable."

Born in Chicago, Vikki lived outside of Paris for a few years as a small child. That may account for her love of travel. She moved to Wichita with her parents before going on to live most of her life around the San Antonio, Texas area. She is the founder of #girlswantago and you can connect through Facebook or www.girlswantago.com 

Vikki is also an experienced, professional  global house and pet sitter.  

Vikki's favorite genre is mystery so it wasn't long before she had begun her first cozy mystery series.  Incorporating her love of suburban homesteading, or as some call it, backyard farming, Vikki's first book is Chicken Culprit.

You'll most often find Vikki out hiking with her dog, outside gardening, traveling abroad, house or pet sitting, or writing her next book.

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Blog Tour: The Childless Ones

Welcome to the book tour for “The Childless Ones,” the debut novel of Cam Rhys Lay! “The Childless Ones” will be released November 12, but you can preorder your copy now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Book description:

TWO WORLDS...TWO ALTERNATING NARRATIVES...A REALIST RELATIONSHIP DRAMA...AN EPIC FANTASY...

In the "real world," we open with Jack Ampong just leaving a prostitute when he receives a phone call that his wife Sarah has been assaulted. With this incident as a jumping off point, we watch as Jack and Sarah deal with past guilt and regrets as well as their own ongoing struggles with relationships, infertility and parenthood.

In the "fantasy world"—ostensibly written by Jack—a bureaucratic Empire rules with an iron fist...an ancient sect of sorcerers have extraordinary powers but are cursed with the inability to have children... and a race of beings called the Mandrakar live lives one quarter the length of normal people, but have memories that are passed on to future generations through the last of an ancient breed of tree. Along the way, we meet a crotchety governor who just wants to do right by his granddaughter, a hardboiled, lesbian, dwarf detective who just wants another drink, and a villainous sorcerer whose motives form one of the central mysteries of the story.

Throughout the book, the two narratives echo off one another—often in surprising ways—ultimately commenting on the very nature of storytelling itself.

About the Author:

Cam Rhys Lay received his Bachelors Degree from the University of Pennsylvania and his MFA from the University of Kansas. For five years, he worked as an Associate Publisher at The Easton Press in Connecticut. Currently he lives in Brooklyn, New York where he runs marketing for Skillshare, an online learning community for creators. The Childless Ones is his first book. To learn more about Cam and his writing, please visit him at camrhyslay.com.

Amazon link(Preorder)

Barnes and Noble (Preorder)

Add it on Goodreads

Praise:
"impressively creates two vivid worlds, each with its own history and compelling characters, while also offering a meditation on the relationship between creativity, fertility, and shared memory. A stunning fantasy debut." -- Kirkus Reviews

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Books are more than just the words on the page.

I’ve been thinking a lot about books as physical objects lately.

One thing I’ve been thinking about is how they have been used in ways they were not intended. 

In the English class I’m taking right now we are learning about the Exeter Book, which is an anthology of Anglo-Saxon literature made from vellum that is around a thousand years old. Researchers have performed analysis on the book itself and found traces of beer on it and particles in grooves on the book that suggest it was used as a board for cutting cheese at one point.

The office I’m editing this post in had a book propping up the leg of a wiggly table for several years before it was removed.

Even when books are used the way they were intended, there’s a lot to consider and appreciate about their form.

It’s funny. I’ve been a big reader my whole life, and, on the whole prefer print books to ebooks, but up until recently I hadn’t put much thought into the act of making the book itself.

Sure, I knew that most of the time books are released in hardcover first, followed by a paperback run, and I knew artist must put a lot of thought and effort into the cover design or image. It never occurred to me that there would be other designers working behind the scenes to make a book what it is when you see it in the bookstore.

I attended a publishing program in New York this summer and it was an amazingly in-depth overview of the publishing industry and what it entails. I already knew what people like editors, publicists, and literary agents were and did (though I learned an incredible amount of new things about those professions too) but one day we had a presentation on book production and it was so surprising to me because I’d never heard of it before.

Book production is essentially the creation of the book that you see in bookstores. The dimensions of a book, paper used for printing, whether or not the outsides of the pages are smooth or ridged or colored – all of this is the job of the book producer. And yes, the cover designer lays out the look of the book. But if the cover is embossed or has a cut out or the paper has a textured or holographic element to it? That’s the realm of the book production department.

Another thing we learned in that program is that around five to ten years ago, publishers were very worried that the physical book would soon become obsolete, replaced by the ebook. If you look at the charts, there was a boom in ebook sales and a decline in print sales for a while, but eventually the levels plateaued and, actually, ebook sales are declining somewhat.

I’m sure there are multiple factors for this, but I think a big part of it is that people do really appreciate books as physical objects, not just words on a page, and have for thousands of years. Hopefully, people appreciate the physicality more for its beauty of design like the book of Kells or some tome one might see photographed for the #bookstagram tag and not its utility as a cheese cutting board like the Exeter book or a block for propping up a wobbly table leg.

Either way, books have an inherent value as objects that cannot be replicated in digital form, though perhaps one gains the convenience of being able to read on their phone.

The next time you take out a book, I encourage you to really look at it. Look at the things that you might normally overlook like the type of paper it’s printed on, the textures on its cover, whether the pages lie flat or have ridges, how the spine is bound – and know that a team of people spent hours weighing options and looking at price points to bring you the final product that rests in your hands. How does the book itself help tell the story in its pages?