3 out of 4 stars
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World, Incorporated by Tom Gariffo is a post-apocalyptic nightmare. Near the year 2020, the people of America were having trouble making enough money to buy everyday things, and pay for taxes. The government began to hurt due to the lack of money coming in. America's debt was starting to build at a rapid rate, so they declared martial law and sent soldiers to collect what the citizens owed them. While all of this is under tow, there is a group of super corporations making a rise. These super corporations are made up of large corporations that ate up all the smaller corporations, then the biggest corporations ate them. You know, the cycle of life. The super corporations are all about their customers, so when they see what is happening all over the U.S. they step in full force. The different super corporation started sending their security to protect the citizens, and maybe get some new customers. The security that was sent was an army of their own. They went to war with the U.S. Army on neighborhood streets, going into homes and telling the residents to come with them if they want protection. This is how the super corporations got their customers. They helped you, now you need to be dedicated to their brand. The super corporations were winning and finally beat out the government.
During the war, and well after, some of the corporations were doing experiments on people that were reluctant to join their brand. Most of the people the tests were run on died. There were a select few that made it through when the all mighty World Inc. came to save the day. One of the people that made it out was a young man named Theodore Rogers, who World Inc. later called Silver. World, Inc. Did some of their own testing on Silver, to see if he was healthy. What they found was that he has superhuman ability's, and in a never-ending war this was an advantage. Silver was offered a job to take out anyone that was hurting the corporation in any way. In exchange, they gave him a place to stay and an unlimited spending limit. Silver does his job but doesn't really enjoy it. He is alone until he comes upon a woman named Kelly, that didn’t have any records in his world. Instead of killing her or leaving her, he took her with him. This is where the novel really takes off. Silver starts to find things out about all the super corporations and realizes that he has been a puppet in a web of lies.
Tom Gariffo did an amazing job of building the character of Silver. A lot of people would ask, how someone can go around killing people they don’t know for a job. Silver was bred for this though, it came so naturally. Even after his backstory is told you get slices of who he is, here and there. Every character that you meet has a personality all of their own. Franklin, Silvers aircrafts brain, is one of my favorite characters. While Franklin is trying to do right by his programming, Silver is always trying to convince him to override it. Most of the time Silver has the upper hand, but that doesn't stop Franklin from bantering with him. One thing that really stood out to me was how most of the chapter ended with a cliffhanger. You want to know what's next so bad that you just have to keep going. The best part is you can keep going. The ending was not much of a cliffhanger but, I did enjoy the original ending.
There was kind of a two-part ending to this novel. The original ending took me by surprise, and I loved it. It was sad and unexpected, but that’s how endings should be. I don't want to read a book that I can predict the outcome of. The second ending was a bit disappointing and corny. If the author is trying to hint at a second book, then it goes well. Otherwise, it was like they added a fluffer ending for those that thought the original was too harsh. The only other negative I found in this novel is with chapter 4. The way we find out what happened in the past is through news reports. I don't have a problem with that, but when the chapter is only boring news reports, it starts to drag. I feel like this could have been addressed differently. Maybe by having Franklin tell it, with some witty comment in between for comic relief. It was such a dry chapter that I almost put the book down for good. I'm happy that is charged through it though because it was worth it.
I rate this book 3 out of 4 stars. I didn’t find any grammar mistakes, so that was a plus. The one thing that I could not get over was chapter 4. After Kelly read all of the news reports in one-night, Silver woke up to her staring at a wall. She was overwhelmed by all the information she received in such a short time. That is exactly how I felt after reading chapter 4. I really wanted to give it 4 stars, but I almost stopped reading the book after that chapter. I would recommend this book to anyone that likes post-apocalyptic and action novels.
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World, Incorporated
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