'Imagine a secret, hidden city that gives a second chance at life for those selected to come: felons, deformed outcasts, those on the fringe of the Outside World. Everyone gets a job, a place to live; but you are bound to the city forever. You can never leave.
'Its citizens are ruled by a monstrous figure called the "Man" who resembles a giant demented spider from the lifelike robotic limbs attached to his body. Everyone follows the man blindly, working hard to make their Promised Land stronger, too scared to defy him and be discarded to the Empty Zones.
'After ten years as an advertising executive, Graham Weatherend receives an order to test a new client, Pow! Sodas. After one sip of the orange flavor, he becomes addicted, the sodas causing wild mood swings that finally wake him up to the prison he calls reality.'
Where to begin with Orange City? I'm not entirely sure. It's a book that took me by surprise more than once, a story where I thought I knew what it was going to be about, where I thought I knew what was going to happen next; yet it kept surprising me with more twists and turns than I was expecting. It ended up being a book that really intrigued me, one that I found hard to put down.
The story begins before our lead character has even been introduced, as we meet E, an agent of The City. E is not a very nice man. We learn that from the start. In fact, we learn that most of the people in Orange City aren't going to be nice people. We're introduced to The City, a huge, advanced place hidden away from the outside world where criminals and castaways are given a second chance at life. At the centre of the city lies the Eye Tower, a monolithic structure that houses The Man, the being who made all of this a reality.
E works for The Man, and it's his job to head back to the outside world, an America still reeling from the War To End All Wars, where he finds those selected by The Man and offers them a chance to come and join The City. It's on one of these assignments that we meet our hero for the book, Graham. Graham is a young man who's had a really rough life, his parents killed when he was a child, brutally beaten by his foster parent every day, and now facing a prison sentence. So when E turns up offering him a fresh start, a way out, Graham grabs it with both hands.
Skipping forward a decade we find Graham as an over worked and under appreciated advertising executive for one of the biggest PR firms in The City. He puts in his work, even at weekends, doesn't go out to bars or parties, and lives the same dull routine day after day. However, he's broken out of his rut when his boss, E, gives him a new assignment, testing out the upcoming flavours for their new client Pow! soda. Thus begins a series of events that will push Graham to breaking point.
The book is described as being a dystopia, a word that gets thrown around a lot in publishing, so I was expecting to see a story with some of the familiar trappings of the genre, but was pleasantly surprised at just how dark and twisted this book was. The City is an absolutely horrific place to live. This isn't one of those dystopia books where a small group of people are raging against an establishment that benefits a certain group, this is a place where everyone suffers, everyone is a pawn, and it's all for the enjoyment of one individual, The Man.
Very quickly into the narrative we see that The City might be held up as a second chance, a place where people can build a new life for themselves and find meaning, but it's really not. Nothing that happens in the city is free. People are constantly watched by The Man and his millions of cameras. Every conversation is listened to. And anyone who doesn't do what they're told, who doesn't act a certain way or says the right things is banished to awful slums, where the inhabitants are fed a cocktail of drugs to keep them quiet and compliant, and they're used for horrific experimentation.
The City isn't a saviour from prison and the horrors of the outside world, it's a prison with a shiny exterior. It's a living hell for most of the people that live there. Now, there could be some arguments that most of the people there deserve to suffer, the majority of them are criminals and killers, but you soon come to care about what happens to these people, even the ones you know aren't good people, because of the greater evil of The Man.
I'm not going to talk about the greater mysteries at play, or what happens in the plot beyond what's outlined in the blurb, as going into the book without any further knowledge really is the best way to experience this. When you don't know whether to expect a mystery, action, or even romance, every part of this story comes as a surprise because it will change from time to time, take your expectations and subvert them in delightful ways. Just be careful though, because much like Graham and his new soda's, you could end up hooked.
Fantastic review!
ReplyDeleteThank you.
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