Review - Fadeout

A copy of Fadeout was kindly sent to me by Christina Adams in exchange for an honest review.

Age range: Teen / Young adult.

Having enjoyed The White Lilac and The Compound, I jumped at the chance to read and review another of Christina Adams works. 

Fadeout still follows the dystopian theme but has a very interesting take on the genre. 

The reader first meets Silas as an 8 year old boy; he has been taken into a large room along with other children his same age. They are forced to watch a teenage boy strapped to a machine which makes small glass balls roll down a tube from his head to a container.

Fast forward five years, the reader learns that Silas, and other children, are placed in a human harvest camp named Cartiam. The Carillians, as they are known are the lowest of the low. Worth more dead than alive. They only have one use; their emotional memories (e-mems) are the only thing used to power the electricity everyone uses. So, they are put into camps such as Cartiam where they are spend their days waiting until they are harvested and with demand increasing, that day may be coming sooner than they think.

 Silas fears that the guards will come and collect him, removing his memories and just leaving him as an empty shell. He's even more concerned about his older sister, Malina, terrified that her time will be soon.

Both try and figure out a way to escape, but their planning is futile when the owner of the compound comes to stay, bringing his teenage son; Jamar. They are from the highest rank; the Tireans. The most educated and most powerful of all the classes. So naturally, Jamar has an air of superiority and picks out Silas out of all the boys as a 'playmate' he can abuse to make himself feel more powerful.

While Silas is being singled out; given trips outside, extra food due to his arrangement with Jamar, the others in the compound become unhappy with the way they are being treated; their food rations are slowly decreasing day by day. With emotions running high, Silas knows he must escape soon, before the worst happens to Malina and himself, but, will that day ever come?

Rating: 5/5

At first, I was a little taken back by the concept of the book. A machine that extracts emotional memories to power electricity? It's a rather strange concept, the most pressing question I have is how do they use the e-mems? I know this is the first in the series, so I hope it will be developed more. It's a pretty 'out there' idea, but nonetheless is very interesting.

The friendship between Jamar and Silas is again very interesting; a boy from the highest rank and a boy from a lowest rank. You would never expect a friendship to blossom out of that. Silas was used just to boost Jamars ego, but, through the friendship Jamar learns an important lesson. It redeems his earlier actions; he only bullied Silas because that's all he knew. I do hope they meet again in the next book and that the harvesting is stopped; perhaps for a method a bit more ethical!

Another aspect I enjoyed was the fact there is no romance. A teeny tiny bit with Malina and Marcus, but he was using her so it does not count! A brother/sister bond was much more refreshing; someone must have been chopping onions towards the end of the book because my eyes were certainly watering!

I am very interested to see how the next book develops as we the reader know very little about the world they inhabit. We've heard about the farms and of course we know about the harvest camp. We know a tiny bit about how the Tirean lives, but I just have this pressing urge to know more!

Price: $0.99
Value for money: Excellent
Buy it: Smashwords