The Digital Now - Roland Allnach

                I’m not someone who reads a lot of science fiction so I wasn’t sure about whether or not I would enjoy The Digital Now. The cover didn’t really entice me although it does resemble how most science fiction covers tend to look to me. However, I read a review comparing this book to the television series Westworld so I thought I’d give it a try. It took me a while to get used to the vernacular, and the style of writing made me wonder if this book was a part of a series where I should have started with book one in order to understand the dystopian world much better. I think, though, if someone is a regular reader of sci-fi they would understand the wording and hecticness of the writing. I did get used to the style and, even though it’s not a style I would normally enjoy, it does work well for this particular book. It is representative of the storyline itself where the characters never really know who is real and who is just a “wipe”, someone whose mind has been wiped by Central and reprogrammed to be whomever Central chooses for them to be.

                Carly Westing’s everyday consists of patrolling and policing the streets and murdering the occasional “cone” (a regular human being) as the need arises. In this dystopian world, cones are considered no higher than cockroaches. Carly begins to have flickering memories that make no sense to her and they lead to trouble because in this world, you don’t ever have a unique thought, only those that Central gives you. It is definitely a complicated story and, although it turned out to be very enjoyable, it wasn’t the easiest book to read. Again, this could have been because I am not familiar with the science fiction world. There are numerous exciting twists and none of the characters are at all predictable. Just when I thought I had someone figured out, the author threw another spanner into the works and I discovered something new about them. I didn’t really root for anyone, except maybe a bit for Noel, and I didn’t like Carly at all but that’s only because the author wrote about this dystopian world so well that the characters became a part of a place I would never want to exist in.

For someone who doesn’t usually enjoy science fiction, I really found myself invested in this book. I read it in digital format on my ereader and it formatted perfectly. As I said, the cover didn’t really entice me but it works for the science fiction genre.