Hello everyone!
Listen, I don't know how it happened, okay?
But all of a sudden these ARCs just started pouring in!
And here I am, happily devouring them all and reading through every single one as if it's the last day on planet Earth.
I've never been happier.
Tonight, we're going into the future, or we're headed into the past, or maybe we're already in the present - who can say?
I only know that it's a story worth telling, worth reading, and absolutely worth talking about.
So without further ado, let's have a look at The Code of Secret Domination, shall we?
Anyway.
Lina is a memory thief, living in a city controlled by a council that's often heard but never seen, or not seen enough, when she steals something that changes her life upside down:
an unmarked memory.
Something that shouldn't exist, but once she takes it to a failed inventor who hacks said memory, it reveals a shocking truth.
The council controls them all, and if they don't like how the path is turning out - they simply erase it, and start again. Like gods.
Shocked, Lina and Elian team up with Maia, a journalist always on the hunt for the truth, and together they decide this isn't something they can just sit on and ignore. They have to actively do something about it.
Ergo, Lina reaches out to the seedy underbelly of the city and gets in touch with someone who knows the Midnight Archive, the place they're trying to break into to save the city, and he can get them there.
The Midnight Archive is basically a memory archive, a place where the council stores ... well, everything.
And of course Kade, their guide, is playing both sides, but Lina convinces him to join them instead, though he goes out in a blaze of glory when they get into an altercation trying to get the heck out of dodge there for a second.
They do, however, at least manage to send out a transmission about the truth behind their city, leading to chaos, and danger to themselves, since they're not wanted across the board.
Oh and also? The council is trying to activate Project Oblivion, aka, they're going to erase everything and start over, if possible.
So naturally, the team goes to track down the governor who's attempting this, and in the process, Lina finds out there's more to her than meets the eye: once, she was one of the council herself, but from a memory she left for herself (a memory in which she looks older, somehow, making even less sense than the rest of the book!) she learns the council wanted her gone because she knew something they feared. Taking the easy way out, she had HERSELF erased, becoming someone new, but now, it's time to finish what she started.
This means destroying any and all potential to activate Oblivion, giving the city a choice, rather than having it ruled by overlords.
In the aftermath, Maia stays behind to continue keeping the truth alive, leading the people out into a bright new future, while Elian takes off to find more cities like theirs and help them. Lina figures she'll just disappear again, but then finds ANOTHER unmarked memory ... meaning that what they did isn't even close to over.
It may only be the beginning.
And since we also get several short scenes of Lina at an auction that feel like from the future, seeing these unmarked memory capsules pop up, chasing random thieves across rooftops who seem to know more than she knows, it's safe to say we're probably getting a sequel and it'll be bombastic!
For a short story, this one has HUGE implications.
The setting, a dystopian futuristic city that lives off memories, gives me Minority Report vibes as well as the Divergent Series, which makes for an interesting combination. The bones are fantastic and the deeper implications of what memories can do, what scientist will (or possibly are?) trying to achieve are rather terrifying.
Lina is a character you easily fall in step with, and the read itself is very easygoing, quick, nothing complicated.
But there are a few things I want to point out, weak links in this armour, so to speak, that lower my rating from the 5 stars it would have been.
The structure is a little bit ... I won't say weird, because that's not the right word. It is, however, off. Because at one point, you're following the group of insurgents into the belly of the beast, then you're suddenly with Lina in a different scene entirely, chasing after someone else, and she's often pictured in different scenes from where the action takes place. I can't decide if this means that everything is written like Lina is remembering it, because the use of present tense in the text suggests that this is happening in-time.
Maybe it's meant to be looked at as a memory, making it a bit of an Inception kind of concept? Either way, however, it's confusing, just like the first Witcher novel where you have to figure out that Geralt tells the priestess stories while he convalesces.
Otherwise, there seem to be missing fragments. There's supposedly a confrontation and stand-down at the Archives, but until you get to them escaping, they're just talking. How one of them sustains an injury remains a mystery; I mean I can fill in the blanks, but the way the text is written doesn't lend itself to easy suggestion, so the fact one of them was wounded is a bit jarring. Not that they weren't - but we get mentions of the others getting hit or passed by, to explain what's happening. Then this rando is like oh hey, he ACTUALLY got hit, with no mention of it ever happening, when we had all the descriptions before. It feels like stuff is missing, is what I'm saying.
Or, you learn Lina has to meet an informant, then the next scene, we skip over that entirely and they're buddying with said informant, already hacking in.
The best way I can put my thoughts in is that the book feels like separate sections with the flow from one to the other not being a pathway, but a break to jump across, and it wobbles the immersion a little bit.
I think, if these transitions are smoothed out a little, then this will be an absolute banger.
The setting, a dystopian futuristic city that lives off memories, gives me Minority Report vibes as well as the Divergent Series, which makes for an interesting combination. The bones are fantastic and the deeper implications of what memories can do, what scientist will (or possibly are?) trying to achieve are rather terrifying.
Lina is a character you easily fall in step with, and the read itself is very easygoing, quick, nothing complicated.
But there are a few things I want to point out, weak links in this armour, so to speak, that lower my rating from the 5 stars it would have been.
The structure is a little bit ... I won't say weird, because that's not the right word. It is, however, off. Because at one point, you're following the group of insurgents into the belly of the beast, then you're suddenly with Lina in a different scene entirely, chasing after someone else, and she's often pictured in different scenes from where the action takes place. I can't decide if this means that everything is written like Lina is remembering it, because the use of present tense in the text suggests that this is happening in-time.
Maybe it's meant to be looked at as a memory, making it a bit of an Inception kind of concept? Either way, however, it's confusing, just like the first Witcher novel where you have to figure out that Geralt tells the priestess stories while he convalesces.
Otherwise, there seem to be missing fragments. There's supposedly a confrontation and stand-down at the Archives, but until you get to them escaping, they're just talking. How one of them sustains an injury remains a mystery; I mean I can fill in the blanks, but the way the text is written doesn't lend itself to easy suggestion, so the fact one of them was wounded is a bit jarring. Not that they weren't - but we get mentions of the others getting hit or passed by, to explain what's happening. Then this rando is like oh hey, he ACTUALLY got hit, with no mention of it ever happening, when we had all the descriptions before. It feels like stuff is missing, is what I'm saying.
Or, you learn Lina has to meet an informant, then the next scene, we skip over that entirely and they're buddying with said informant, already hacking in.
The best way I can put my thoughts in is that the book feels like separate sections with the flow from one to the other not being a pathway, but a break to jump across, and it wobbles the immersion a little bit.
I think, if these transitions are smoothed out a little, then this will be an absolute banger.
xx
*image not mine
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