3.5 stars

My rating is entirely for the writing style, superb and oh so easy to read, and for the unexpected, intelligent suspense plot. And to another Manna Francis's story with an ending that lets me open-mouthed and awestruck.

I have some problems with the background.
* One is my sensation that we aren't before a real revolution but at best a revolt that's or will be marked by Gatopardism —changing something so nothing changes—. Isn't true that they didn't end to put out the rebel bonfires that already were filling I&I with prisoners to take out information from them whatever the price? But I'm not sure, cause that information is scarce.
* Strikes me that only PanEurope be mentioned, as it were the only existing land, And the rest of the world? If today the world is highly globalized and transnational corporations are the daily bread, how much more in this future that Ms. Francis draws? Only PanEurope and Mars? That seems incomplete to me, or lacking of explanation, again.

But the most problematical, from my point of view, were the recurrent characters.Foremost, it's too centered in Toreth, accentuated for a quite discolored Warrick, that seems to have lost his nerve..

With regard to Toreth, I keep reaffirming my idea that isn't a full sociopath; for example:
* Has a relationship of years with Warrick, in which clearly he isn't violent -unless it is for pleasure- nor a dominant Alpha Male that has Warrick totally subjugated.
* His reaction to Carnac's "farewell": .Meanwhile a complete sociopath surely wouldn't register it, to Toreth, on the contrary, it affects him greatly.

Also there are some things about Carnac that I'm not quite convinced by
* His predictive ability is a little too humongous.
* In an environment so controlled like in which Carnac was raised and educated —we know it from previous stories—, and with such advancing level in the human psyche's studies, result unusual that his mentors would have ignored that Carnac could develop so easily such change of heart with barely one exposure an "interrogation".
* Besides, although oneself agree with the primordial purpose that encourages him, the almost obscene pleasure that he finds in planning and to fantasize on the executions, turn him as disgusting as that that he wants to eliminate.

In fact I think that Toreth doesn't bear Carnac not only for the jealousy that overflow him, but because in part, it's how to look himself in a mirror. One is as manipulating as the other one and both have something of sociopaths

In order to finish, Sara commits a series of stupid things, incongruent with her antecedents, and that turn her in a somewhat pathetic creature. ( )

Well into the Administration series, the muted, every day terror of the dystopia in which Toreth and Warrick live is abruptly changed. A successful revolt against the Administration leaves Toreth beaten and waiting to die in one of the very cells he used to put his own prisoners in. Through cleverness and sheer stubborn will, Toreth and Warrick manage to survive the machinations of those who would put an end to I&I.

Rooting for the sociopath torturer and his sociopath friends against liberal resistors feels uneasy, and Francis never makes it easy for the reader. Lots of twists, turns, manipulation and narrow escapes, plus further deepening of the trust between Toreth and Warrick. ( )

I'll have to come back and add to this review because all I have right now are emotions and nothing coherent. I am satisfied and aching. Sad and hopeful. In love and in-complete. There is more to say, but just not now.


Take a look at my Male/Male Romance Book Blog:


http://www.attentionisarbitrary.blogspot.com ( )

So, excellent. And devious.

Could not stop thinking of Nazis while reading this book. Because Manna Francis impossibly, bizarrely, in a truly astonishing mind-fuck, does a pretty good job of convincing the reader to root for the continued existence of the Interrogation & Investigations division in this book.

Root for the continued employment of a collection of sociopathic torturers.

Root against their summary execution.

It should not be possible. But there it is. ( )