2 out of 4 stars
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Though I dislike the signature bleak future usually painted by dystopian novels, I must admit their reasons for the world getting to that apocalypse state are not usually farfetched. Thomas Hill’s Chip’s World: Complex #31 and The Caretaker is no exception. In this futuristic science fiction/fantasy novel, humans over-relied on robots for practically everything, including military operations. When a glitch causes defender robots, used in wars, not to differentiate between their masters and the enemy, all hell breaks loose. You may be wondering how this isn’t farfetched. Well, the world now is all about automation as evidenced by a recent article by Sam Ovens entitled, Evolving from human to machine, which said in part:
Chip’s World: Complex #31 and The Caretaker left me nostalgic about the robot uprising in the movie I, Robot. There were so many similarities between the book and the movie. Of course, the differences were also just as many. After the defender robots go rogue, the surviving humans have to hide underground yet remain constantly at war with the robots. Chip is a supercomputer housed in a mysterious room. It connects to all electronic devices and indirectly rules the New Nation through the unscrupulous High Council. Chip and the High Council are working a tightly wrapped sinister conspiracy. When they suspect that Dean Haggerty, a clever computer programmer, may have stumbled on bits of this conspiracy, they banish him to the desolate northern frontier aka complex # 31. In this manner, Dean becomes the caretaker of complex # 31. Unknown to him, his life is in grave danger, from both within and without the High Council. Will this naïve nerd learn quickly enough to outsmart his enemies? What if the High Council were to take hostage the wife and son he left behind?You must evolve from providing value in the flesh to providing value via the machine. The outcome for the client remains the same. When you do this, you escape the laws of physics and biology. Clients want outcomes. They don’t want an organic human body using their mouths to reverberate sound waves at them.
The book is action-packed and twists oriented. There is perpetually some threat or altercation amongst the myriad of beings the author creates. He blends technological advancement and fantasy so well that just being human appears bland in comparison. Consider the example of the Sprinters who run at such super speeds that they are a blur to watch. I liked that the author provided a logical explanation of how each group of beings ended up as it is. In other words, though the fantasy was magical, the magic was not rigidly contained in unexplained absolutes.
Writing in the third person, the author offers the reader an omniscient perspective. The book explores wars, government conspiracies, betrayal and perseverance in marriage The plot is more action than character oriented. There is very little background to individual characters. Even for the main protagonist, Dean, his wife and son appear out of nowhere, right in the middle of narration. The nonstop action makes up for anything else that could be lacking. It was all systems go from the start to the end of the book. This was very reminiscent of Island Games by Caleb Boyer. Tweens, teens and young adults would probably be thoroughly thrilled by the book, as such fast-paced action usually draws them in. I also think the book has the potential to be developed into a good movie.
So, why am I rating this book 2 out of 4 stars? To begin with, the author apparently thought he could avoid a lengthy buildup, by moving back and forth in time, during narration. For example, when the G-Critters were about to make an entry into the story, he went back to when and how they came into being, before carrying on with their attack on an unsuspecting victim. Unfortunately, the beings he introduced/created in the whole book were just too many. As a result, the timeframe got muddled up. I had to keep going back to the year at the beginning of each chapter, to find myself, in the unfolding plot. This disrupted the flow of the story. Second, there were too many sub-plots which the author failed to effectively rein in. Thirdly, I encountered numerous grammatical errors, including but not limited to mixed tenses, awkward sentences, wrong word usage, and missing words. This proved to be a wet blanket on my reading experience. Finally, some adjectives like hunchback Charlie felt rather insensitive. In short, the premise was sound, the plot was interesting, but its execution fell short. The bright side is, it is nothing a round of editing can’t fix.
Though this book is right up the tweens’ and younger teens’ alley, I hesitate to recommend it to them in its current state. This is because the grammatical errors may confuse them, especially if English is not their first language. Older teens and adults who don’t mind action over one-dimensional characters can, however, give it a try.
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Chip’s World: Complex #31 and The Caretaker
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