Book 9: The Eternal Prison (Jeff Somers)

Reading time: 2.5 weeks
Pages: 406
Genre: Science Fiction

First of all, I suck at reading these books on time, dang. I'm at 50% here of my goal. :( But anyway, onto the book!

It was time for some science fiction, I was just in a mood for the beef jerky of books, not the cotton candy. You may also feel that some genres take more attention to read than others, while some you can zoom through in a few days at max. Does this make some books better than others? That's all relative to the reader. And at least for me, if I read romance or chic lit, I'd chomp through it in two days, while a fantasy novel may take extra time to learn the rules of the new world, etc.

"The Eternal Prison" follows Avery Cates, an infamous hitman type in the undated future where society has been corrupted by police, the government, a plague wiped everyone out, you get the picture...

You know that advice Thumber gives Bambi? If you don't have anything nice to say don't say anything at all? That's kind of how I feel.

Cates is contracted to take out the bad-ass president. While in the midst of trying to assassinate the big fish, he is captured and taken to Chengara prison, where basically no one has escaped from before.

I was really frustrated for a while because Cates kind of sucks as a narrator, sorry. It's quite jumpy and once I got the idea that there was a parallel story happening ("oh this chapter is past, that one is now, and back to the past again... and ... now I'm confused"). By no means must a book be linear in plot, but I would have liked some notification when I was thrust back to before and after, because there wasn't a pattern, then it became linear with no past jumps. OKAY???

Cates as a protagonist was... alright... sort of... He's a bit complex because Somers wants him to be seen as this bad guy who's, of course, the best fighter, most talented with a gun, but can't stand to leave someone behind. Cool, except I don't see his character as being one to risk his own skin for someone else's. The future painted makes me wonder how the heck anyone has kids, let alone kids that survive to be adults, and then to be picked off left and right, no big deal, it's not like the global population plummeted by billions. Sure.

Cates hints that he's old, but in this kind of future, I'd say you were an old geezer if you made it to 25. It's got a bit of action, and seems a little ironic in the end. During a cloning procedure (they copy your brain and can make duplicates of you, exactly your personality, for the government to use. Awesome!), the army interrupts, leaving Cates hooked up to a bunch of wires, and somehow giving him personalities of people in power locked in his head. These 'voices' aid him at some times, but honestly, I finished the last 150 pages in one day because I wanted out of the Eternal Prison of this book.


Grade: D

+...no.
-Spastic timeline
-Protagonist has no weaknesses, besides hiding his good guy heart. Aw sweet. Not.
-Would I recommend to a friend? No.

+Oh right, the idea of cloning my personality into a computer and making droid copies of me is frightening technology, and perhaps is a cool conversation to hold.
THE END.