Wake Up and Open Your Eyes
Reviews
It's the Great Reawakening, are you ready? Will you be the wake up call? ---
Adjust your motion smoothing, it's all an act. "All a part of the show, folks. ."
• The brainwash is strong with this one; plunging readers into the depths of society's poisonous addiction to media consumption. With its premise dancing along a razor-thin line, that blends absurdity with startling familiarity.
• The novel's central news channel "Just the Fax" serves a not-so-subtle nod to Fox News. It confronts us with the terrifying consequences of relying on single-source information, while dismissing all other perspectives as mere "fake news." (Déjà Vu anyone?)
• In a world where people gorge themselves on (biased) media, that quite literally/figuratively transforms them into the very monsters they fail to recognize. Where even young children are not safe, with the use of tablets/smartphones etc. becoming commonplace.
• From the dangerous, (sometimes deadly) internet challenges, to the filtered lives of Instagram stars, following trends, going viral, watching life idly pass by through a camera lens. .
• Although, its style choice did test my patience with its use of redundant, repetitive mantras/stretched-out phrases (listening through my AI reader, said phrases caused the AI to glitch and warp its tone into something that verged between maniacal/demonic😱).
• (i.e.): "mommmmmmyyyy," "jusssssst theeeeee faaaaaax," (you get it) a needless "baby ghost song" (#flashback to a grating classic, Baby Shark) that was sung to entirety, and monotonous chanting/inserts of the main title; including one chapter that repeats "WAKEUPANDOPENYOUREYES" over and over (scrolled-through😒). .
• In spite of all that, I do recognize its objective in allowing the reader to experience their own decent into madness right alongside each character.
• This book will most likely be a mixed bag of positive/negative reviews, but honestly, I liked the author's approach of turning a politically and socially charged message into something more sinister; involving the psyche, body horror/possession, and exposing humanity's susceptibility to manipulation and tunnel vision.
It dares us to confront the narratives we've been fed, purge them back up, and reveal the unsettling truth that lies beneath. .
Highlights
Devon was desperate to enter that endless current of photos on her feed, to swim with the women of wellness, a siren herself. She imagined them all as mermaids. Every last lady. Beautiful mermaids. The scales on their tails were thousands of tiny smartphone screens, shimmering with that familiar pixelated mother-of-pearl, a swirling rainbow hue, purples and pinks and greens, an oil spill of glistening electricity.
If you really want to wake people up, you need to go viral.
To spread into a million glimmering fragments.
Benjamin Pendleton was the first to pull out his cell phone. He held it up and recorded Caleb. Another student pulled out their camera as well, recording. It was such a knee-jerk reaction, Caleb thought with contempt—capturing the moment on camera. Rather than stand up from their seats and help, see if he was all right, they videotaped him. Livestreamed it. The lens put enough distance between Caleb and themselves that they could pretend this moment wasn’t happening to them, too. As if they weren’t even there. It was more pressing to share this slice of life than to participate in it. The moment needed to be spread rather than resolved.
Devon wanted to join them. Be one of them. Swim in their stream. She yearned to crawl through her tablet’s screen and be a part of that photo-filtered existence. Crema. Perpetua. Valencia. So many filters to pick and choose from. She was spending more time online, scrolling through her tablet. It was so easy to lose herself in the endless outcropping of profiles, the tea-drinking, sweater-wearing, mountain-hiking, parasailing beauties. Smiling back at her. Winking.
It started with a bit of rubbernecking. Asher wanted to peek at what was happening on the other news channels. It was wise—healthy, even—to take in a range of reporting. He was well aware of how social media siloed people into echo chambers of recycled misinformation. He saw it in his own family. All the scrolling. His wife got her news from Facebook, of all places. That wasn’t news, that was simply an algorithmic force-feeding of bullshit masking itself as info.