Right from the beginning, this novel sucks you with a very stark and depressing opening, which carries through most of the rest of the novel to create a quick sci-fi thriller tent-poled around a strong central concept: the government euthanizes everyone over the age of 60 in a desperate attempt to save an over-crowded world from destruction. The opening chapters of this book follows one of these unfortunate "retirees" right up to the day of his "retirement", creating an atmosphere of such strongly dystopian themes as to be reminiscent of "Brave New World". Indeed, so many of the characters and people in the book just accept the way things are as to create a crushing sense of hopelessness. Reinforcing this is the fact that the author constantly slips in quick off-hand statements about the way this future society works, subtly building the story without resorting to long streches of exposition.
But that tends to be the author's strongest ability: setting up concept. Once the story has to move into plot building and action sequences, things get a little more muddled and unoriginal. Don't get me wrong: Robert Brumm is on the right track: when the story breaks into action sequences, the pacing is good, the fights are realistic, the details are rich, but it just lacks a certain ... pop. A certain pizazz. And often, the author forgets to work on scene building. Additionally, while he does provide more than a few internal monologues for most characters, I found myself not quite able to relate to anyone, just because there was never enough ... emotion, enough specific or strong reactions to events. I see that this author doesn't have a large library of works yet, so I get that he might still be coming into his own.
Finally, the biggest area the author fails at is the details of the concept he establishes for the story. The strongest part of this novel is the first few chapters, before you get behind the curtain and see the truth of things. When you do get to that point, and you find out what the government is hiding, the story crumbles a little. A few quick internet searches would have revealed why the specifics of certain ideas are either misguided or flatout wrong. And as soon as one of the post-reveal scenes start, you'll probably roll your eyes due to the blatant rip-off of a very VERY well known cyberpunk sci-fi movie from the late 1990s. If you know what movie I'm talking about, it's not what you think (probably), but the SECOND titular concept from that movie, which made SOME sense there, doesn't really work here.
Other than that, the book is quick, well-paced, and starts out with a strong opening that creates an element that carries through the whole novel excellently. While the author falters on the details, I would like to see a sequel or another free-standing story take place in this type of future ... it seems like he had a lot of ideas that didn't get to be fleshed out completely.
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Top reviews from other countries
Annie W
Just a little too believable for comfort!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 13, 2014
Thomas Peiffer
Definately worth a few bucks to read!
Reviewed in Canada on April 3, 2014
Juliet Foster
Worryingly plausible
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 17, 2012