Not Quite the Expected Utopia…
Have you ever sat down to watch one of those late night films which you just know is going to be longwinded and boring, yet you haven’t been able to walk away becauae you really wouldn’t mind knowing what happens at the end? Well, this book is like one of those films. ‘Utopia’ is qute longwinded and rather boring in parts, largely due to the fact that the writing stlye isn’t very consistent, but I found that I just did not want to stop halfway through. I just wanted to finish the book, just to see how it resolved itself.
First time solo author Lincoln Child (he has previously co-authored books with various authors, including Douglas Preston, with whom he wrote ‘Relic’ and ‘Riptide’) has tried to create a story which is a day-in-the-life of a theme park. The theme park, Utopia, is situated in the middle of the Nevada Desert and boasts the best in AI technology to its visitors, of which there about 65,000 per day. There are four worlds of different themes and eras, not mention robots, holograms and the best theme park rides of the day. It is an idea, a dream, the creation of a man, who, when the book begins, has been dead for many months. Of course, with a name like ‘Utopia’ and 514 pages worth of book about it, something has to go wrong and of course it does, in the form of a Mr John Doe and his team (original or what?). People are injured, some die and worse might just be about to happen. It is up to the park engineer, Andrew Warne, to sort it all out. Of course, this insn’t fine and dandy, as Warne’s teenage daughter is trapped within the theme park, which is a time bomb thanks to John Doe and his associatess.
‘Utopia’ has received some fantastic reviews. The internet bookseller, amazon.com, hailed the book as a triumph.
I won’t tell you what happens in the end, because that would spoil it, but I do recommend it to those who enjoy a bit of a thriller and the chance to guess the next move, working out how it was all done. Stick with it. It may be boring in places, but you can’t just leave it without knowing what happens, and whether utopia really is possible…
| Nouse has one copy of Utopia to give away. Email nouse@york.ac.uk by the 15th of November with your name and email. Winner will be selected at random. |
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