G. M. Whitley

I read this book in two days. It would be cliche to say I couldn't put it down, but also inaccurate, because I did indeed put it down several times (I have this thing called a job that sometimes has to take priority over my reading, go figure). But the brilliance of this book was that every time I picked it back up, I felt like I had never left. I fell immediately back in to whichever story I was reading.
Each of the linked stories, revealed in alternating chapters, is compelling in its own way. Victor and Mari are high school sweethearts who've grown up on Basic Living ("BL", or a futuristic expanded version of welfare) and find they have different ideas about how to get off and stay off of BL. Two other storylines focus on young males who are delivered from BL through the largesse of the wealthy: a rich old man plucks one of his building's valets up to the penthouse to be a personal assistant, and a rich corporation gives a hefty scholarship to a talented adolescent. Finally, an older couple scrimps and saves at the end of their lives -- they're not on BL, but they're only a half-step ahead of it and never seem to gain ground. Their stories are woven together and speckled with little quotations from fictional-but-very-realistic sources based on the present: you get sound bites from future politicians, the Trinity Broadcasting Network, The New Yorker, even Reddit.
Most of the characters are so well-drawn and sympathetic that it was easy to forget I was reading speculative fiction at all. Then a carefully thought out detail, like the algae-based GL diet, would startle me out of my comfortable reading and make me think about the construction that went into the world G.M. Whitley created. I'm not quite sure whether or not I want to live in this future, but I am sure I want to read more about it. Good thing book 3 of the trilogy is due out soon.
… (lisätietoja)

First, the premise is intriguing. 5-year-old Lucy claims she is inhabited ("imbued") by an alien consciousness. Her mother reacts realistically -- she's proud her daughter is so creative.

Second, the execution is adorable. Lucy painstakingly makes her way through a dictionary because she "needs more words" to explain her existence.

Third, the development is believeable. For a book that [maybe, maybe not] involves aliens, this is important.

Unfortunately, Part 1 ends abruptly. I half-seriously wish I'd waited until Part 2 was available before reading Part 1... so now the question is, do I wait for Part 3 to be available before I start on Part 2?

If you haven't read anything else by [a:G.M. Whitley|6918330|G.M. Whitley|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1361666373p2/6918330.jpg], try [b:Peace Out|17155998|Peace Out (The Futures Trilogy #1)|G.M. Whitley|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1376949867s/17155998.jpg|23577809]. It's available for a very reasonable price on Amazon.com.… (lisätietoja)

Downloaded the Kindle version yesterday and settled in to read a few pages before going to sleep. Two and a half hours later, I reluctantly forced myself to stop (I was about 80% done with the book at that point).

Finished today on my lunch break. So that should speak to how engrossing the plot lines are.

This is the third book in the Futures Trilogy, but this is a trilogy in a different-than-usual sense. For the most part, this isn't a "first Book One happens, then Book Two happens, then Book Three happens" series narrating consecutive events in the lives of certain characters.

Far more interestingly, each book in the series focuses on a different aspect of social organization in Whitley's somewhat dystopic future. Book One, [b:Peace Out|17155998|Peace Out (The Futures Trilogy #1)|G.M. Whitley|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1376949867s/17155998.jpg|23577809], explored a national euthanasia program: senior citizens, mostly, but also terminally ill or suicidal individuals can choose to peacefully exit existence on their own terms. Book Two, [b:Basic Living|18376266|Basic Living (The Futures Trilogy #2)|G.M. Whitley|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1377532179s/18376266.jpg|25973946], limned a futuristic workfare system replete with algae-derived affordable sustenance and forced-but-temporary sterilization for BL recipients. The third and final book, Sanctuary, takes a look at those who are too handicapped/disabled/addicted/mentally ill/violent to hold down jobs on BL. In Whitley's imagining, they're given a few months or years (children are held til age 18) of three algae-meals a day and a warm bed (i.e., Sanctuary), but then, if no family comes to claim them and they can't hold a job, they're gently Peaced Out. One of the most chilling descriptions in the whole trilogy is of the room full of decomposing corpses -- the bodies of the Peaced Out -- circulating under fans and being dehydrated so that (1) the water from their bodies can be recycled, and (2) the cremation process won't require so much energy. Whitley's term for this process is "deliquescence," a chemical term meaning "to become liquid" or "to melt away," but the term itself is scarily perfect in its clinical detachment.

I loved Sanctuary, but Basic Living remains my favorite of the trilogy. Read all three books and tell me which one you enjoyed most!… (lisätietoja)