Boy 23

Jesper is a teenager who lives somewhere known as My Place. He lives in complete solitude. An entity he knows as The Voice tells him what to do and arranges his sustenance. Out of the blue The Voice tells him that he is in danger. He is free to leave My Place and never return.

The reader next learns that My Place is managed by a malevolent organisation known as the Huber Corporation. For reasons as yet unstated the corporation is seeking Jesper to kill him. Questions abound. Who is Jesper? What is his significance in the sum of things? Why is the Huber Corporation so set on his destruction? The story now mounts to new levels of complexity and scope, involving a conspiracy aimed at global supremacy, a world pandemic and genetically modified entities.

The strengths of this novel include narrative pace. Once the reader has passed the opening pages the story unfolds quickly and compellingly. Any reader on the lookout for allegorical connections will soon begin comparing the Huber Corporation with the Third Reich. The reader’s sympathy for the characters is also soon enlisted.

The opening of the book is deliberately mysterious but it risks not providing the reader with enough evidence about what is happening. The reader may struggle to detect relevance. In the end a conventional science fiction denouement is tacked on to a teenage psychological study. The confusion of genres makes for hard going for the reader but in the end the book’s strengths make it a worthwhile read.