A virus that steals not only your voice but also your creativity? The fiction lover’s nightmare! Set to release in July this is an exploration of how far someone can go when desperate…
Goodreads Summary:
Adelaide Te Ngawai was thirteen when Maunga Richards stole her voice.
Addy is plunged into silence when a high school bully inflicts her with an incurable disease that leaves her unable to speak, write, or create. Vox Pox—a man-made malady that’s been terrorizing the city for months. Resilient, Addy fights to survive. To not be silenced. But then her brother, Theo, is infected as well.
Desperate for any information that might help cure Theo, Addy follows Maunga into a newly developed virtual psychoreality simulator and discovers a conspiracy deeper than she’d ever imagined. How far will she go to save her brother?
Sounds pretty cool doesn’t it? I’ve been gradually trying to dip my toe into the waters of science fiction and I think this was a really good place to dip. There wasn’t too much science babble to confuse me but there were elements of futuristic-ness that made the whole thing seem very exciting. I get why people read this genre, I mean fantasy is my first and only true love but I’m coming round to the idea of science fiction.
Anyway, back to the matter at hand. I thought that the way Wilson conveys the change of suddenly losing one’s voice and also one’s creativity was handled well. I think this kind of thing is always a bit tricky and you can sort of feel the author wanting to get on to the meat of the story, but they don’t shy away from conveying the difficult emotions that come from being totally isolated from the life you once lived.
Addy is a pretty cool main character. She managed to deal with her condition without becoming aggressively whiney and nor does she feel unrealistically brave. She does what she does because she has to, not because she is the saviour of mankind or anything.
Let’s talk about the ‘psychoreality’, this is kind of therapy crossed with inception. There are dream-like elements to the way things work but it all comes down to some kind of science in the end. Maybe I have a tendency to skim read detail or maybe this just isn’t explained as you’re meant to understand as much as Addy would have understood. At any rate, the science isn’t the most important part, the story is.
This is a story that touches on many themes, defying adversity, the threat of medical advancement, siblings, enmities and overcoming enmities, the whole nine. They’re all woven together into an enjoyable story that will have you anxiously flipping the pages to find out what happens next.
I’m interested to see where the story will go in the second part of the duology and I’ll be keeping my eyes peeled.
My rating 3.5/5 stars, this isn’t precisely my cup of tea but it was an enjoyable read.
By the way, I received a digital advanced review copy of Voiceless from the publisher (Atthis Arts, LLC) in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own and I wouldn’t recommend things unless I genuinely thought you would enjoy them!
What do you think? Will you be adding this to your TBR shelf? Let me know in the comments below or on twitter @judithcmoore.
Can’t wait to hear from you!
J
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