Kimberly Amato

TW: Torture, rape, graphic violence

Kimberly Amato knows how to build a dystopian world. She also can present chaotic conflicts that move so quickly that it’s hard to catch your breath. While Enemy has a vivid world and a raucous climax, it is unable to combine setting, story, and character development simultaneously to deliver a well balanced book.

Enemy sets a depressing situation. The United States of Russian Federation rejects equality and a democratic republic. Anyone not meeting the society’s definition of genetic perfection is condemned to low-level servitude and scientific experimentation to enhance the lives of the 1%. Women are held in low regard and rape is a component of daily life.

Ellie Goldman was a top agent in the Multinational Security Council before most of her peers were purged during the forming of the new society. She commands the New York resistance fighters and refugees, trying to figure out how to take down the government and go back to the ways of the early 21st century. There is a rift on the resistance when some want to attack Riker’s Island, where lower classes and dissidents are tortured and subjected to horrific experimental weapons, treatments, and any other horror imagined by the rulers and supervising staff.

Amato does an excellent job painting a picture of the overall society. Unfortunately, the plot points and characterizations can get lost in the setting. I had a hard time reading the first two-thirds of the book because of the challenges distinguishing between characters. During the final reckoning, I was confused because I had trouble remembering who everyone was.

I was disappointed that I couldn’t get as engaged with the story, because it was loaded with potential. The elements - plot, characterization, and setting - were there, but they weren’t presented cohesively.

Thank you, Blackthorn Book Tours, for providing me a copy of the book.… (altro)

This was pretty grim. I got a sort of “boxed set”, in ebook form, of the first five of the Jasmine Steele books. Whoever put the books together didn’t even take the time (less than an hour, I would guess from my own experience with doing such things) to make up a table of contents. Then too, there were numerous grammatical errors and words that clearly didn’t belong in the sentences wherein they were placed.

Then, there’s the story. Jasmine Steele is supposed to be cool by modern standards. She’s a cop, who is a lesbian, and also the guardian of her nephew, i.e. a de facto single mother. She hangs with her three best friends, trying to figure things out. One is a medical examiner; one is an actress who specializes in zombie movies, which feature her unclothed in numerous scenes; and one is a shrink, who also happens to be Jasmine’s ex. Well, I found all this contrived coolness unconvincing. It didn’t help that Jasmine had serious personality issues and was not a likable character. The plot could have been interesting, but wasn’t presented in a way that engaged my interest. I just wanted the book to be over.

There’s little probability that I’ll read any of the other four books in the compendium I got, assuming I could find them in a thousand-page tome that has no table of contents.… (altro)