Nicholas Kay
I review new books, mostly independently published, for Reedsy Discovery. I’ve been on a kind of review blitz this month; the title below is the first of my December reviews that’s gone live. I gave it three stars. I received an Advanced Reader’s Copy of this book from Reedsy Discovery in exchange for my honest review. You can visit the review on Reedsy to see the author’s synopsis of the book.
And now, the review of Touching the Void:
Well, my parting thought on this story is that it’s over too soon – before it has a chance to begin, really – which speaks well to the author’s ability to engage his readers. I was drawn – or maybe pushed – into this futuristic nightmare of a world, and was charmed by young Xiao Mei’s teenage machinations as she purchased the latest techno gadget and wondered how she would tell her parents about this life-altering decision. This, the drive to get the latest and greatest devices on the market, seems to be timeless and it’s the most believable part of the story.
The author uses over-the-top imagery, so much so that some metaphors are actually funny, and I struggled to follow the activities of the bad guys at times – what exactly was their scam? Where did they come from? The timeline is also confusing. In the end though, this was a very readable tease of a story. At eighty pages, it’s so short that I thought I had missed something. If I were a betting peson, I would say this is an initial attempt, and that we might soon see a full-length dystopian novel based on the characters and storylines found in Touching the Void.
I’d be one of the first to read it.