The Future Will Be BS-Free by Will McIntosh
My rating: 2 of 5 stars Every year when I take my vacation in the woods, I take my Kindle and a stack of books to get through. Usually in a couple weeks I can clear anywhere from 7-10 books. How on earth do I do that? Well for starters, I pick brain candy books like the Future Will Be BS Free. These are the books that you find yourself realizing that you just don't have to think that hard while reading them. I decided on this one since I've been behind on my NetGalley reading lately. The book takes place in a not too distant future in which America finds itself in some sort of Dystopian landscape controlled by what can only be described as the female version of Donald Trump. Here's where things start to grate the nerves. On page one. It's as though the author decided that he didn't want to potentially draw the parallel to Trump and had a "brilliant" notion to make the character a woman instead. Six genius teenagers find themselves on the cusp of creating the ultimate lie detector test in the garage of their friend Rebe. This "truth app" which isn't an app at all (it's a ring) let's the wearer know exactly when someone is lying. It's somehow so specific that it can tell if I person is lying, even if the person is unaware of the subconsciousness of their own lie. Amazing! And barely believable. Soon, the kids are approached by a shadowy figure who wants to buy their research. When they decline, one of their group is mysteriously killed. From there, everything goes crazy. The kids end up on the run with cybernetic super soldiers and causing a secondary civil war. Every time a dire situation pops up, they magically have the perfect solution. It's an entire group of Mary Sues. These kids take on the President, armies, hackers, vigilantes, torture, grave robbing, basic teenage angsty love, and everything else under the sun. It's not that I hated it, I just found it to be ridiculous. The kids went from situation to situation with almost no preface. Poof! They are on the run. Poof! They have a facility built in order to create their truth app. Poof! The President is kidnapped. I also felt like there were just too many characters to keep track of. There are the six kids, three cybernetic soldiers, multiple bad guys, multiple people who assist them along the way. There's practically no character development. The names of the characters are a stretch even by my standards. The highlights? Rebe, Boob (so named because his dad was so excited he accidentally wrote an extra "O" on the birth certificate), Basquiat, Silhouette. I simply can't. I guess the one thing I did like was the (relatively brief) descriptions of the world in which they were living. It could have been done in more detail but it's a compelling concept nonetheless. I liked the overall premise but I just wanted more. More detail, more likeable characters…just more. It wasn't awful but it wasn't awesome. Honestly, if you have something else to read, I would recommend doing so. View all my reviews
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