The premise of religion surviving the massive overtake of science is a hopeful one. Mankind and all of his creations, which are powerful in their own way, still cannot dig God out of their trench. The indomitable search for freedom in a rapidly caving society grabs at me. I want to stand up and root for them. I liked that they didn't stoop to the level of those after them and resort to desperate tactics. Through it all runs a thread of budding romance between Zoe and Noah. That they didn't immediately throw off all their clothes and have wild sex on the nearest church bench makes me wildly happy.
GAPs live in idyllic cities, separated from the unaltered have-nots. Zoe is no different. She's been raised as a privileged socialite on the fast track to success. She'll probably marry her GAP boyfriend and settle down to have her allotted two children and shop for the next 200 years.
At least that's what she thinks until her brother goes missing and is found dead on the wrong side of the 'wall'. Zoe heads to the 'Outside' to find answers. What she finds is more questions--and the son of her family maid, who helps her hunt for the information everyone else is withholding from her.
Shadowy people are trying their best to keep all information about her brother's demise close to their chests. They'll do anything, including erasing memory, murder, and alterations to bodies to guard those secrets. What they don't plan on is Zoe's tenacity and Noah's ingenuity--and their capacity to love each other.
The possibility of a chipped future chills me to the bone. The thought that we could soon in actuality be forced to be chipped makes my teeth itch. The technology is already in use. We already know that cloning and chipping are being done on animals. Certainly somewhere cloning is being illicitly performed on humans. Chipping is. Technology has far outstripped our ideas of what is actually possible outside the realm of sci fi. So what's to stop our civilization heading in exactly this direction?
Nothing.
Not law. Not ethics. Not lack of money. Not lack of talent or drive or greed for money or power. That's why I loved the hope I found in the end of this book. We are starting to experience the potential for mankind's evil.
But can we also experience the potential for overarching good? Please let that be the case. Let there be people like Noah and his father who won't stand for being forced into second class citizenship because they won't mess around with the human soul. Let's hope there are Zoe's who, though born to privilege on a grand scale, still can shuck it off and rise above it.
I've already gone out this morning and purchased the boxed set. I definitely have to know what happens to Zoe and Noah. Check out PERCEPTION by Lee Strauss. You won't need any but the edge of your seat.
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