Kfir Luzzatto

Before I start since I don't usually finish books to give them rather lackluster reviews, I was really excited about the plot's main concept. A plot featuring a sort of Matrix virtual reality city? Cool!

The first chapter is brilliantly written. We don't really know anything and are just as clueless as the book's very geeky 21 year old physicist Kal when he is unwittingly dragged by one of his few friends Janec to a working class neighborhood of "The City" to have a few drinks in a bar (something Kal doesn't really understand all that well it seems but he is hating the loud music and crowds already) and a tomboyish teenage woman immediately sits down in their private table for a seemingly important conversation. As if by magic, cops show up unannounced, kill the woman's friend Jamie while Janec is stunned and taken away after he tries to coax the cops he was in Sector 5 with a valid permit.

Kal has no idea what the hell is going on while he watches the cops drag his friend away to a very poor fate but the woman tells him to follow her through the ladder and escape if he wants to stay alive. Do I feel some Total Recall deja vu over here?

After such an adrenaline lashed first chapter, we get to see the manicured world through Kal's eyes under the influence of his chip as he woke up earlier that fateful day and merrily walks around the scientist complex, enjoys the farm animals grazing outside of The City's walls from his office window while he tinkers with an electromagnetic pulse device. That is when his world becomes all sorts of weird and he explains the freakish stuff he saw to Janec the very minute his coworker coaxes him to visit a place in Sector 5...

When you write a book with a particularly fast-paced first chapter with very high stakes, you can either keep the book going at a nonstop go,go,go,go pace (which is irritating to a lot of readers but many hardcore thriller enthusiasts will enjoy it nonetheless), or alternate with some slower chapters in between. Slow doesn't always mean that absolutely nothing happens in the plot, it can also mean characters develop, change or we get glimpses of the world building.

One thing many readers seem to feel missing in Chipless and I totally agree is that the middle of the book doesn't really get to stop for a moment and smell the real roses outside of The City so to speak, and the plot had a real goldmine of opportunity here.

Kal soon realizes the strange woman that saved him is Amber, she is a "savage" outsider from a faraway city named Freeland and doesn't have the chip so she sees his city for what it really is all of the time. Sadly we don't get to stick around because the government wants to capture and kill Kal to have a chance to find out, which is understandable.

She reluctantly takes Kal to an underground hideout hidden beneath a complicated network of sewers where other scientists from a rebelling anti-chip faction reside. She then explains to Kal that the magnetic wave he created that damaged his chip by accident could be replicated to a large amount of people and potentially overthrow the government. Kal is expected to go on a road trip with Amber to the wastelands by foot and reach Amber's city.

Now, this sounds good and all. Not much info is given about the perils ahead because we still assume there is radiation or something outside of the city and the rebel scientists prefer to get rid of Kal immediately before the cops show up. The plot hole problems of the book seem to arise once the duo reach the first outdoor settlement and problems just multiply as the story goes further on.

I have a hard time knowing whether the author started putting filler in the middle trying to think of other punchline problems that can be solved in the next chapter to make the book longer and the plot mistakes occurred more by accident or he didn't think they would be a big deal. For example, Kal wears a very obvious scientist technician uniform that would make him an easy target the second outsiders see him. It seems like some of the rebel scientists have ventured to a few of the nearby outdoor settlements in the past and Amber had plenty of time to relay knowledge of the outside world over the 6 months she had lived with them. So how come nobody thought it would be important to give Kal some clothes?

We discover early on that Amber is the niece of the secretary of security of Freeland who oversees the city's defense, a city that has been forced to defend itself from raids from neighboring enclaves for ages... yet she doesn't seem to show any kind of combat skills. This isn't a megacity with a huge army, their volunteer army is pitiably small. It would make sense that women with the physical aptitude and political means (such as Amber) might know a thing or two. Heck, she doesn't even know how to pick a lock? Seriously? Doesn't know even the basics on how to fly a helicopter even though her city has them? Strange as it is, Kal has knowledge that doesn't seem akin to his sheltered lab-rat upbringing. He knows how to fly a helicopter rather adeptly, knows that birds can destroy a plane's motor even though he has never seen birds before, and somehow has the combat skills to break someone's neck with a lot of ease even though he never mentions he ever got hand-to-hand combat training. Oh and he instantly learned how to shoot a rifle without freaking out or getting his ribs hit by the rebound mechanism (I guess these ultra-modern Sci-Fi guns from his City don't do that?). Even though Amber should possess all of these abilities given her rougher upbringing, she constantly exudes the damsel-in-distress stereotype yet she is supposed to be the "strong female lead character". I felt Dora and the truck driver to be far stronger female characters than Amber even though neither showed any combat skills.

To further add extra confusion about the story, I initially assumed Freeland was a day or two away from The City, just located next to a toxic wasteland that made it rather difficult to pass through. Instead, the book hints it is located approximately 2400 miles away. Now, things initially make sense it is a far-flung place because it wants to be self-sufficient and has plenty of talented scientists that have developed modern technology to keep it afloat. Makes a lot more sense The City sees the place as a threat for ideological reasons and would love to conquer it out of spite.

What doesn't make sense is that The City apparently has a food shortage problem (nobody knows what 3D printing is or hydroponics gardening?), is hated by all of the savage settlements in between, yet these nearby provinces produce lots and lots of food. The City could easily crush these places and take their resources. It makes very little military sense to go after Freetown, even more because it is next to a desert. Like... why?

I find it strange that despite the difficulty to reach other regional settlements because of bandits, everyone speaks the exact same language as Kal. He has zero accent and any language nuances he can't pick up are mostly slang phrases caused by his sheltered middle-class life. The mysterious catastrophic event called "The Pulse" only happened a few decades ago. Seniors would still remember the world before the event (seems like the book doesn't agree whether The Pulse happened exactly 50 years ago or around 70). The book doesn't really say much about why people in the savage lands would have such a hard time fixing a lot of technology like watches if knowledge could have been easily passed down given gasoline was still widely available (the Pulse apparently didn't affect the IQ of Freetown's inhabitants even though it was the epicenter of the event). The book only briefly mentions a lot of people initially died from strange plagues that later on "vanished" by themselves after the second generation of kids were born with a greater degree of resistance... and yet strange lethal diseases can still appear for no reason making it necessary for Freetown's outward provinces to issue a brief quarantine to visitors. Huh? The book doesn't seem to agree whether plagues are common, uncommon, curable or whatnot. We do know that City inhabitants aren't given vaccines to protect against various new diseases even though some inhabitants interact with people from the outside world on a regular basis.

Now, what about the villains? I found Alvin and Larkin to be predictable but still interesting. Sadly they don't appear all that much and their intentions are very unidimensional. I much prefer morally grey villains with conflicted ideas. We eventually discover The City has an elder council of survivors of the Pre-Pulse Era that have safely deactivate their chips (the book doesn't mention whether the chip can delay aging although it is likely) that also exerts a lot of influence in the inner politics of the place, but we never meet them.

As for the forced relationship between Amber and Kal, I feel rather ambivalent about it. Maybe it was because I didn't care about Amber's character all that much. She is mostly just there as a tour guide to bring Kal to Freetown and that is it. Kal meanwhile just takes things waaaaay too easily. I understand he has a hard time understanding his emotions due to the City's society (which I would have expected to go out of control once he leaves the city and the chip can no longer regulate bursts of adrenaline or dopamine). The book does mention Kal feels confused about these new emotions and feelings he has, but they are mostly relegated to feelings of prudish nervousness when he sees too much skin on a woman or when Amber holds his hand and invades his sacred inner space. He never misses his parents or worries whether they are being harmed. Doesn't seem to care that his friend Janec is most likely dead. Doesn't suffer from much of a mental breakdown when he sees ancient technology or animals for the first time either.

Strange as it may be, I didn't hate the book. I think it had a lot of potential to be awesome and might even give book #2 a chance in case it exists just to find out what happens. If only it didn't have so many endless plot holes! >_… (más)

I received a free copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review. This is a book of two short stories about Dave Callahan, a popular private investigator that specializes in the paranormal. The first story is named for the title of the book, Phantom Lover. In this story, an aristocratic woman hires Dave to investigate her husband who is having an affair with an ectoplasm. It starts off pretty good, but even for a short story, it was way too short. This story had so much potential to be awesome, I really don't understand why it was brief and then it ended extremely anticlimactic.

The second story, Accidental Lazarus, was by far exceedingly better. In this case, a prominent thug, "Stupid Joe", has been murdered at a restaurant he frequents. He arrives at Dave Callahan's apartment, with a giant hole in his chest, requesting his assistance in finding his murderer so that he can exact revenge. In return, he says he won't whack Callahan and promises to go back to the morgue. This was a humorous adventure as Callahan searches for a killer and Joe decides to start living, which puts him in quite a few hysterical situations. All in all this book was a quick fun read, but because of the lack of content in the first story, I can only give it four stars.
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I received a free copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review. What would you do if someone required your assistance to bring someone back to life? Franco Lorenzi lives a mundane life as a professor; everything seems fine until James Easby calls upon him to assist a distant relative. This is when his life suddenly becomes chaotic and endangered. At a party thrown by Easby, Franco becomes enraptured by a beautiful young Parisian actress, Eva Thibault. Their attraction is instant and although a seemingly unlikely pair, they become a force to be reckoned with. Who can they trust? Can they even trust each other?

This was a fascinating fast paced novel that toggles between 1894 and 2009. We also travel from Italy, Paris, London and Switzerland as we search for information and letters regarding The Evelyn Project. This was an amazingly creative story that kept me turning pages. There were so many twists in the story that I couldn’t put the book down! I loved the main characters, they were so determined. I appreciated the fact that the romance wasn’t rushed and it was worked in perfectly. I think this was a great paranormal mystery that everyone will enjoy!

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Chipless is a dystopian YA novel, somewhat of a cross between The Matrix and Logan’s Run, with romance between the two main protagonists Kal and Amber. I enjoyed the story but, while there was a lot of exposition, I feel that important elements should have been explained. For example, what exactly was The Pulse and why did it happen? In addition, the book ends rather abruptly and I wasn’t totally convinced by how the final scenes played out. Finally, as I’ve stated in other reviews, I’m not personally a fan of romances between 17-year-old girls and men in their 20s, but judging by how common this is in YA fiction I appear to be in the minority and this won’t be off-putting for most readers.… (más)