Starred review from June 3, 2019
What if the totalitarian regime controlling people’s lives was a mega-corporation rather than a fascist government? That’s the conceit of this intelligent Orwellian thriller by Hart (the Ash McKenna series), who imagines an all-too-plausible near-future in which an Amazon-on-steroids company called Cloud dominates retail sales and the labor market. The story is told from three perspectives: multibillionaire Gibson Wells, the founder of Cloud; Paxton, a newly hired security employee at a MotherCloud facility, where he also lives; and Zinnia, a shipping worker and resident of the same facility. Wells, who’s dying of cancer, presents Cloud’s history, which includes taking over the FAA from the federal government to help expedite Cloud’s drone deliveries. Paxton, whose business was bankrupted by Cloud’s monopolistic practices, hopes for a meaningful relationship with Zinnia, who’s actually on a corporate espionage assignment for an unidentified employer and looks to use Paxton to further her mission. Hart’s detail-oriented worldbuilding, which credibly extrapolates from the Trump administration’s antiregulatory agenda, makes this cautionary tale memorable and powerful. This promises to be Hart’s breakout book. Agent: Josh Getzler, HSG Agency.
June 7, 2019
In the near future, tech giant Cloud owns nearly every company in America. They have such a monopoly that working at one of their MotherCloud facilities, a live-work concept, is the best job available. Two new employees are Paxton, who's in security and looking for the source of a new drug called Oblivion that causes overdoses, and stock-picker Zinnia, who works in the massive warehouse and runs nonstop to find products during ten-hour shifts. Zinnia is also a corporate spy, working undercover to get Cloud's info for a competitor. When she and Paxton start a relationship, it complicates Zinnia's task and makes Paxton think he might want to stay at Cloud. The story follows the couple in brief chapters, telling their adventures. Interspersed is a blog written by Gibson Wells, the man who built Cloud from nothing, who is dying and desires both to visit each MotherCloud location before he goes and name his successor. Hart (Take-Out; "Ash McKenna" series) writes an enjoyable mystery that is hard to put down. VERDICT Highly recommended for dystopian fiction fans. The film rights have Ron Howard associated, which will pique more interest.--Jason L. Steagall, formerly with Gateway Technical Coll. Lib., Elkhorn, WI
Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
June 1, 2019
In the near future, the world has been irrevocably altered by climate change. Once-verdant landscapes are now inhospitable, virtually uninhabitable. Cloud, a massive company (imagine the wide-ranging inventory of Amazon combined with the business practices of Walmart), is for most people the only source of goods, entertainment, the very necessities of life. The company's huge MotherCloud warehouses are self-contained cities; you don't just work at Cloud, you live there, too. To one MotherCloud installation come two new employees: Paxton, a former prison guard and entrepreneur whose small business was driven under by Cloud's demand for deep discounts, and Zinnia, a young woman on a secret mission. As they navigate the world of Cloud, each discovers that what they believed about Cloud doesn't quite match up with the reality of the place. The new novel from the author of the Ash McKenna amateur-sleuth series is very well constructed; a lot of thought clearly went into Cloud and the near-future world it dominates. It's an exciting, well-paced thriller laced through with insightful commentary on today's politics and commerce. A film is in the offing, with Ron Howard directing.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)
Starred review from June 15, 2019
When does the line between utopia and dystopia begin to merge? When you owe your soul to the company store. Hart (Take Out, 2019, etc.) is best known for his private eye novels about Ash McKenna and a novella co-written with James Patterson (Scott Free, 2017), but he's tapped a real vein of the zeitgeist with this stand-alone thriller about the future of work that reads like a combination of Dave Eggers' tech nightmare, The Circle (2013), the public's basic impression of an Amazon fulfillment center, and Parzival's infiltration of IOI in Ready Player One (2011). In the near future, following a series of mass murders at retail outlets, traditional commerce is dead. Every need has been ported over to Cloud, a worldwide fulfillment facility where anyone who wants to survive works--those who don't either give in eventually or are a customer--in something of a feudal society where algorithms decide your role. Cloud is the brainchild of Gibson Wells, a mad genius who is dying of pancreatic cancer but whose role in the story is assured by his broadcasts to his millions of employees. Our two leads are Paxton, a former prison guard whose entrepreneurial invention was co-opted by Cloud and who has reluctantly taken a security job with his enemy's empire, and Zinnia, a secretive operative with deadly skills whose role on the product-picking floor is only a means to an end. While touching on income inequality, drug addiction, and corporate espionage, Hart creates a compelling and intriguing thriller that holds up a black mirror to our own frightening state of affairs. Hart dedicates the book to a real victim, Maria Fernandes, who worked part time at three different jobs and accidentally suffocated on gas fumes while sleeping in her car in 2014. That's a profound inspiration, and Hart has written a hell of a prosecution of modern commerce and the nature of work, all contained in the matrix of a Cory Doctorow-esque postmodern thriller that might not turn out the way you hoped. Part video game, part Sinclair Lewis, part Michael Crichton; it adds up to a terrific puzzle.
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