Tome Thursday: Aaru

Hello everyone!

Before I say anything else, allow me to write something first.

WARNING: there are triggers in this book. Namely for sensitive content, religious content, sexual image of teenagers, stalking, and a general warning against pedophiles.

I usually don't have to put this in front of any of my blog posts, but I felt the need to stamp it front and centre first, because I failed to see any of these in the book itself and, while I'm not squeamish and generally speaking I'm fine with most of what I read, some readers aren't, and so I believe that this should be added right before you start reading the book Aaru.

Secondly, I'd like to say I was sent this book in exchange for an honest review, for which I'm very thankful to the author, Mr. David Meredith.

Opportunities like these don't come along very often, and despite the warning posted on top, I'll do my very best to give a review that will reflect good both on me and the author.

Now, to the book, Aaru!

If I hadn't figured out by the time I finished reading the story, I would have when I looked the link up on Goodreads that there are more books planned. Which I think is actually very smart for this kind of premise, although a stand-alone would perhaps have worked, as well. Who knows?

In any event, more books in this fantasy universe! Or is it science fiction? I think it could be classified as a healthy mix of both, but I may be wrong.

Anyway.

Aaru is, at its core, the story of two sisters, Rose and Koren. Rose is sick and dying (I'm thinking some form of leukemia) and has given up hope that any kind of cure might ever be found. At this point, she's only sixteen years old. Her sister, Koren, thirteen at the start of the book, doesn't want her to die (which is a natural reaction any teenager will have in this kind of situation).

All of a sudden, it seems like that won't happen.

A mysterious, scientific-looking man arrives and places a sort of helmet onto Rose's head, but even so, Rose ends up dying - until Koren (after having a meltdown worthy of all meltdowns) and her parents are escorted to an institution called Elysian Industries, where they are shocked and stunned to be able to virtually (as in, through a technological system) connect and speak with Rose again!

Note: I liked the play on the company name; Elysian Industries brings to mind Elysium, which is the lightest and happiest part of the Underworld, the domain of the Greek God of death Hades (his realm divides into the Fields of Asphodel, Fields of Punishment, and Fields of Elysium, and in Elysium you may also find the Isles of the Blessed, where the truly virtuous souls and heroes go to live after death). So at its core, Elysium Industries made me think about a happy post-death experience.

How does it work?

Well, the company had managed to scan Rose's brain, but not just the physical composition of it - they also caught the impulses travelling through different parts, in essence the thinking process and what makes us who we are, which enabled them to create a virtual form of the deceased teen, who is now living in a virtual world called Aaru.

This is where the storyline divides into two, one following Rose and her after-death life, and one following Koren and her parents.

I'll start with Rose, first.

In Aaru, a paradise where nothing dies and no one can hurt one another, she is what Princess Hana, one of the overseers, if you like, calls a Veda, that is one of the first souls brought to Aaru who will be responsible for welcoming others and for letting the Makers discover any glitches within the system itself. Because, yes, inevitably and at the end of the day, Aaru is a virtual system, not an actual world, although the citizens within it do treat it as such.

Rose is soon joined by other Vedas, nineteen of them in total, and starts making friends with whom she then frolicks about, plays soccer, has tea parties, etc., and manages to even develop feelings for a boy called Franco. And through all this, she speaks with her sister Koren whenever Koren wants to talk to her.

Now, back in the real world, the Industries ask Koren to become a speaker for the Aaru system, just like family members of the other Vedas around the world, and she accepts the role, quickly shooting into stardom and becoming a celebrity, not that it's all going smoothly.

Despite meeting her childhood crush, Jonas Perry, and apparently these two could perhaps manage a relationship later on, things aren't all smooth sailing: a group of extremely Christian senators and their entourage are violently against Aaru and 'playing God' as they call the experiment, but the biggest threat comes from a different angle entirely.

Namely, Magic Man.

Magic Man is the sort of person that frightens people the most in real life and gives police officers and FBI agents nightmares because of both his intelligence and his sociopathic tendencies. Think Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock but without the endearing qualities.

Magic Man has a forum, or posts on a forum, where he shares altered, graphic images of Koren, and has a fantasy in which he will possess her and thus become complete. 

Note: For me, it was all explained with the mention of the Ubermensch, a philosophy chased zealously by Hitler's Nazi Germany during World War II.

The perfect celebrity world starts to crumble for Koren first when she actually meets Magic Man during a premiere launch, then when her family home is broken into, and then when it becomes clear that the cameras placed into the house for the purpose of a reality show had been hacked and footage leaked. It all culminates with Magic Man raiding the Industries compound, killing the real-life, physical interpretation of Princess Hana (boy, it took me FOREVER to piece that together!), and abducts Koren.

His goal: to stream a live-feed video of him raping the fourteen-year-old, but even worse, taking a scan of her brain, scanning his own, and somehow merging the two in the virtual world, which is even worse than being forced to carry the man's child, IMO.

Anyway, this doesn't go without repercussions in the Aaru world, either, where Magic Man first manages to hack and tries to download Rose's file, but they stop him. However, Rose is then used as bait for them to track Magic Man and save her sister, although in the process he does in fact get an almost-complete Rose file, the scan of Koren's brain, and salvages the basic equipment he needs.

Still, the rescue mission is in itself successful, because Koren isn't physically violated, and the sisters manage to share one more thing: Rose introduces Hana, so Koren won't feel so lonely.

But with Magic Man still on the loose, it's only a matter of time before things come to a head again.

This is where book one leaves off, and it's actually quite the cliffhanger! At least we have some happy endings, for this time, however, as Rose and Franco manage to consumate their growing relationship and Koren now has Princess Hana as well as the potential with Jonas Perry.

Of course, there's also a reason for the warnings I smacked on top of this post.

This book deals with questions Mankind has asked itself ever since we've become intelligent enough to do so, which is: what comes after Death? IS there anything? How do you overcome Death?

It's a controversial theme and quite nicely handled in the book itself, because in religion, there is always some sort of afterlife, something that this Aaru system circumvents and negates. The residents are neither alive nor are they dead, so what are they, exactly? And how long do they have? They will presumably not age, since it's a digital, created world they can manipulate at will (depending on the rank that allows them to do so, of course). So what does this all mean?

Then there's Koren's portrayal. She starts off the book as a thirteen-year-old, and I think this was one of the things that might have bothered me the most, and never actually received any explanation or correction. As soon as she becomes a speaker for Elysium Industries, she becomes a sex symbol. Not in the sense they're generally perceived, but don't tell me it's normal for a kid to wear sky-high heels, tons of makeup (which at thirteen she REALLY doesn't even need) and tape to make sure they give her cleavage. HELLO. She's thirteen! She doesn't have it yet! It's also mentioned at one point that she should get a boob job to 'make this easier'. And through all of this, until the point where their own privacy is also violated, Koren's parents just roll along with it.

Note: The image of what a child Koren actually still is can be seen in the panda stuffed toy she carries around, Pandadora, who used to belong to Rose. The name might be a play on Pandora and Pandora's box, namely opening something that's better left alone and not poked too much, because if you DO open it, it'll bring all kinds of trouble.

I like to think that money changes people, but one thing I'm sure of: my parents, especially my father, would never, EVER, allow anyone to sex up one of his daughters, no matter the price, especially at thirteen. No amount of money could ever persuade him to budge (and trust me, as his eldest child, I have some experience with what does and does not move this Mount Everest of stubborness; hint, precious little).

This is sort-of corrected when they put her into a more demure, but still sort of sexy, business outfit, and I'm sitting here thinking Elysium Industries is basically to blame for the stalking problem later on, because they were the ones to create this image for the girl, after all, which put her on the sociopath's radar.

I think this issue should be addressed more firmly because of the message it sends out into the world. Most of the others were worked through during the course of the book and handled better, or really well, but somehow this one slipped through the cracks.

My one last comment is that the writing style felt off. Mostly it was the lack of abbreviations that bothered me - in the beginning these could also be found in speech, and no self-respecting teenager talks in perfect grammar, trust me. Later on the speech became okay-ish, but all the descriptions still flowed with a style that would probably suit a medieval setting more than a modern one, something that jarred me from the story a lot of the time and I kept substituting things inside my head for more modern slang, which then made me forget about the lines I was reading. 

I'm not saying all of it was bad - obviously I finished the book and I quite liked it! I'm just saying that there's a certain style that fits a certain story, and the one chosen for Aaru didn't quite fit the way it was probably intended to. I half expected someone to wake up and walk into a Henry Tudor tournament at one point.

All that aside, however, I will repeat myself that there should be a trigger warning somewhere after the title and content pages of the book, purely for safety reasons so readers don't complain and give this book a negative reading. If you want to avoid this kind of thing, it's your right to be forewarned in advance about it, right?

Other than that, I do recommend this book. It's definitely different to anything I've read before and more than just a little bit interesting. It asks important questions and doesn't just give flimsy answers, there's a lot of thought behind them. And most of all, it also doesn't make fun of accepted beliefs, either. Which is quite refreshing.

So if you haven't yet read the book - pick up David Meredith's Aaru and decide for yourself what you think about it! I know what I think. What's your opinion?

xx

*image not mine