I have been reading like crazy recently, because there's nothing else to do on this god forsaken farm, and I took a day or two deliberating what to read next as I may have out-read myself into a slump (if that's even possible) and nothing was really taking my fancy at all. I chanced upon this little novella (that's actually available on Amazon UK for free at the moment) just for the pure and simple reason that it was small and would hopefully be easy to read. Might I add that for once I didn't have any prior knowledge of the book or read any reviews on it before reading it so it was a completely blank slate - which I really need to do more of.

 

Enough with the rambling. Thoughts.

 

This book was intriguing from the word go and you were immediately sucked into a world that you knew nothing about. Foreign terms were being used and a whole history was carrying on where it left off right from the start. The filtering of the worlds knowledge was shown gradually rather than an information block which, in such a short book, the author may have thought necessary to get everything across in a timely manner. However, Minkman handled this aspect perfectly.

 

The dystopian element to this book was wonderfully creative; it didn't need any fancy magic, monsters or viral disease, it just served it's purpose and was quite charming to say the least. I was happily reading this book however, when I suddenly realised that this is like a Star Wars fan-fiction of sorts. Now, with the fact that I didn't read any prior reviews, (which is a good thing) this came as such a shock to me, and I didn't know quite what to make of it. To be honest, I'm not a massive Star Wars fan, if one at all, and I did find it to be a bit strange how it was incorporated into the story.

 

Questions were asked at the beginning and were all perfectly resolved at the end and quite simply, this book felt so rich to me that I'm amazed how it all got packed into such a tiny outfit. They do say that good things come in small packages and I most definitely count this as one of them.

 

Rating: ★★★★☆