Revolution 19 by Greg Rosenblum: Review

Revolution 19
by: Gregg Rosenblum

Kevin, Nick and Cass have survived with their parents living out in the wilderness; free from the bots that have taken over society. Their village is decimated, and they travel to the nearest city in search of their parents. What they find there isn't quite what they expected...

Just from the premise and the opening scene you get a very strong Terminator vibe. Or at least I did. The bots that were created to fight the war turned on their creators and made the humans the slaves. Or wiped them out all together. Though I get the sense that the bots in Revolution 19 are a bit more altruistic than those in Terminator. (Full disclosure: the only Terminator movie I've seen is the new one with Christian Bale. Because, well, it's Christian Bale. He was awesome in it, though the movie, not so much.)

Anyway, so after the village is wiped out; Kevin, Nick and Cass head into the city to track down their parents. They assume that either their parents have been killed, or they are being educated for reintegration into society. But, before this there is a bit of an opening scene where the bots are culling the people, and Nick gets a nice little scar from his altercation with them. The opening scene was very compelling and held great promise for the book.

But, not too long into the first couple chapters, I started to lose interest. It's hard to put my finger on what exactly went wrong, but I think that it was the introduction of a new character and her parents. Their interaction and dialogue was very forced. And there was also the sense that no one was really ever in real danger. I wasn't on the edge of my seat waiting for the robots to come pick these kids up. It had all the elements of a great story, but unfortunately, the writing just wasn't there.

As far as sci-fi post-apocolyptic robot books go, I think I'll stick with Partials.

    

---

goodreads | amazon | bn | king's english