Book Review: The Unidentified

The Unidentified

by

Rae Mariz

Image and Information for this book found on Goodreads

Reason for reading this book: 

 I purchased this book for $.99 as the Kindle deal of the day on 1/10/2012.  The book description was intriguing.

My thoughts:

I'm not sure I liked this book.  I'm not sure it was even a good book.  I'm not sure I even felt like it was well written.  But it was strangely fascinating in the fact that I think this might possibly happen in my lifetime.  

The story for the Unidentified is set in a High School and the characters are High School age.   The public education system has failed and is now privatized.  The school is actually a re-purposed shopping mall.  The object for the “sponsors” who run the school is to watch for students who are “trendsetters” and brand them.  As a result the student body is continually trying to “sell” themselves in order to get ahead in school.  The thing I found most uncomfortable is how the kids were in a totally “screen oriented” world.  They were all given as part of their educational experience—a smart phone and a lap top.  The “sponsors” and parents could track the kids through the GPS chips in their devices and they also had access to live-streaming of all their network conversations.  Basically it was a high-tech prison where kids were exploited for the purpose of selling product; a very creepy scenario.    I didn’t like the fact that characters didn’t really have “names”.  They had tag names that they used in the virtual world.  Most of the dialogue was also “text” speech.  It left me confused as to what was really happening--but in the end it fit the story.  The story is told in the first person by the main character, kidzero.  By the time I got to the end of the story—I had sorted out who was who and what was happening.  And I did like the ending very much. 

Would I recommend this book?

I wouldn't recommend it for everybody but if you would like to try something different and are open to scenario's for the future you would probably like this.

three reasons review