Tuesday, February 26, 2013

BZRK by Michael Grant YP FIC GRANT


The future war is fought on the nano and the battleground is the human mind.  This new war is played like a videogame but the stakes are life and death. The Thompson twins are building the perfect utopia.  No pain, crime, war, sadness, poverty or want. And all for the low, low price of the eradication of humanity’s free will.  That’s if the hackers known only as BZRK can’t stop them. But when you fight a war in a human mind, any mistake leads to irreparable madness.

This is a fast paced thriller with a fascinating premise, killer action, and wonderful twists and turns.  I loved the video game style and the fight to the death battles. All this is to be expected from the author of the megahit Gone series, but unfortunately Grant’s gift for building fascinating characters with substance and depth are not at their peak in BZRK.  I did really like the books “villains”, Grant does a commendable job of making them have motivations beyond loving evilness. However, the books main protagonists Noah and Sadie are sort of bland and never really grow in an interesting way.  On the other hand, this book has awesome bloody warfare inside human bodies and that is always great! Really, the book works so well in its strengths that its weaknesses never keep it from being immensely readable. The idea that there could be a secret war along my skin and in my very innards made me feel itchy and very creeped out.  The book ends with a huge climax and loads of loose ends, because of course this is a new series.  I do hope that Sadie and Noah get a bit more fleshed out as characters in the sequels, but this is still an absolutely original and high on the can’t-stop-reading-it-into-the-very-wee-hours-of-the-morning scale.

You can check our catalog for BZRK here.

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