Sunday, August 31, 2014

Finished (E-Reader): California by Edan Lepucki


 Am about 3/4 of the way through California by Edan Lepucki.  I've been reading a bunch of dystopian novels over the past few years, as my daughter has an interest in them (e.g. Hunger Games, Maze Runner, Divergent).

I, like everyone else, is reading California because it is published by a company that Amazon is refusing to sell on their site.  Stephen Colbert advertised this book and pointed to several non-Amazon sites where it could be ordered - a very successful, though inadvertent, sales increase for Lepucki's book - over 60,000 pre-orders.
California is set in the near future, there hasn't been anyting as dramatic as a nuclear war, but Lepucki has extended climate change, income disparity and post-911 security fears and extrapolated all a few years into the future.  Our current social supports have eroded, severe weather and flues have decimated much of the U.S. population, and the wealthy have retreated to walled cities.

The main characters live in the post-world, basically alone, squatting in an abandoned shed.  Life isn't terrible, they do see a travelling trader, so are able to get some "old world" stuff, and living in California, they haven't been experiencing severe winters.  However, without the internet, without power, and without fuel, there really isn't much news around - they couldn't pinpoint what's going on elsewhere, and have a very 1700's level of locality - the know their neighbourhood, but not much beyond.

I'm quite enjoying the book and look forward to the final quarter.  Given the nature of the book, having a corporate giant (Amazon) making it difficult for the little guy to survive seems most fitting.

Update:  Finished the book.  Still like it, but like all of the dystopian novels and comics I've read, the big reveal is early - finding out how the new world is different than "our" world, and how it came to be.  The rest of the story about the characters and what happens to them becomes secondary.  The book resolved reasonably, but I found the idea to be greater than the character-driven part of the story.








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