So I was able to finish Dan Krokos' book "False Memory", which served as an action sci-fi young adult novel, and quite honestly I don't know how I feel about it. The premise for the story is quite a good one. It's set in the city of Cleveland and based on "teens" who have the ability to use psychic energy to transmit waves of fear to crowds of people. They basically serve as weapons and unless given "memory shots" their memory becomes erased. The twist to this is that these teens aren't exactly human, but clones, replicas, of others. There's apparently a team of them, Alphas and Betas, but Alphas didn't stick around for too long.
The story revolves around the protagonist Miranda North. She wakes up on a park bench with no recollection of who she is. Upon seeking for help, she ends up accidentally triggering her psychic power and meets Peter, the boy who knows who she is, or more precisely what she is.
We follow Miranda through her journey of self-discovery and her struggle to remain alive and not become just a weapon. Although this premise sounds like a good one I felt Krokos' story lacked a strong sense of characterization to push this story forward. Miranda didn't serve to me as the kind of protagonist I cared for much. I found her to be rather flat, yes she did feel emotions, but they only scratched the surface, as did the rest of the story.
Many of the answers to the questions I had were vague when bought up in the book. Why did they need to make these human weapons? One of the doctors said it was more than just the money, then why else? Simply because she was truly a mad scientist?
Relationships in this book also played a key role in why I probably was not as involved with this book as I could have been. Miranda and Noah, one of the other team members, apparently had a relationship but now that Miranda's memory was erased she really didn't remember much of it. She claims to have a shadow of love that she felt for Noah but her true feelings were for Peter. With so much going on in terms of transference of memories or lack thereof, the ties in these relationships got lost. Miranda was part of a tight knit group. That group consisted of Noah, Peter, and Olive. But that group had quite the love square going on, involve that with memory loss and sometimes it left me wanting to close the book completely. Plus I felt characters who knew the real reasoning behind the creation of the clones were just thrown into the story and then thrown out way too quickly. Examples: Dr. Tycast, Dr. Conlin, and Mrs. North.
The only characters I found myself to be involved in were Rhys and Peter. Rhys, part of the Alpha team, had a story that seemed full, complete, as well as that of his own character. Peter had that tragic hero quality to him. He loved Miranda before her memory loss and he loved her after. Of course it was unrequited at first but he was loyal to her throughout. Noah and Olive played more as secondary characters to me, although I think Noah was supposed to be more than that in the story.
I don't want to give away much in terms of plot, but there is a lot of action and description of fight scenes. . Krokos' writes in a manner that scratches the surface, going strictly on the basics of things, which is probably why it didn't work much in terms of the emotional aspects of the characters. On my rating scale I'd have to honestly give "False Memory" a 3.0
No comments:
Post a Comment