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Friday, April 15, 2016

Fluence - Stephen Oram

I was provided an e-Book ARC for review by the author:

What if there is no more any government and everything is handled by mega corporations and everything is not linked with your social media scores think Facebook made more creepy.

This and more is the premise of new Dystopian novel by author Stephen Oram, in this new world there is global appraisal now called Pay Day which changes people's lives by making their life better or worse. People are divided by stratas and colors White being dormant, Blue being lowest and Red being highest.

The next pay day is coming and we get to read about two very different individuals Amber who is young and ambitious and would stop at nothing to achieve her goals  and then there's Martin older and jaded and frustrated with years of struggles.

As the pay day comes closer people and the frenzy increases and this frightful story comes to a close. Frightful because this dystopian world can become real tomorrow. The characters and their frustrations and mentioned really well, I also loved the fluency with which author has set up a world which is advanced as well as frightening. The people would always stay the same no matter what time of the future you are in time stream, there would always be greed, pride and cheaters in our midst no matter how ideal you want to make your world. Another thing stays true no matter how generic your society the super rich would still be the  most powerful.

Something about the book ... a blurb


It’s the week before the annual Pay Day when strata positions are decided by the controlling corporations. The social media feed is frenetic with people trying to boost their influence rating while those above the strata and those who’ve opted out pursue their own manipulative goals.

Amber is ambitious. Martin is burnt out by years of struggling. She cheats to get what she wants while he barely clings on to what he has.

Set in a speculative near-future London, Fluence is a satirical story of aspiration and desperation and of power seen and unseen. It’s a story of control and consequence. It’s the story of the extremes to which Amber and Martin are prepared to go in these last ten thousand minutes before Pay Day.

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Something about the author



I write novels and flash fiction that are designed set off small firecrackers of thought to light the world slightly differently inside your head!

I've been a hippie-punk, a religious-squatter and a bureaucrat-anarchist; I thrive on contradictions and am a great believer in being slightly askew from the crowd. There are all sorts of ways of doing that - by being on the fringes of society, by travelling to other cultures or simply by being tipsy during the day. 

I write contemporary dystopian fiction set in a recognizable near-future. I love taking reality, nudging it out of kilter and seeing what happens.

Like each and every one of us, my perspective of the world has been affected by many people and experiences: as a teenager I was heavily influenced by the ethos of punk; in my early twenties I embraced the squatter scene and then joined a religious cult, briefly; I did some computer stuff in what became London’s silicon roundabout; and I’m now a civil servant with a gentle attraction to anarchism.


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This Review is a part of the Blogger Outreach Program by b00k r3vi3w Tours

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