Precisely Terminated

Back Cover

 

With microchips implanted in their skulls at birth, the slaves of Cantral and Cillineese have laboured under the tyrannical rule of the nobles and their computers for centuries.  Monica, a noble who avoided the implanting and escaped a death sentence at the age of four, is now sixteen and is in hiding.  She lives with the slaves inside the walls of the Cantral palace, pretending to be one of them while the slave council plots a way to use her chip-less state to destroy the all-powerful computers that strike down any hint of rebellion.

 

The fate of millions rides on Monica's shoulders.  As the only chip-less person in the world, she must find a way to destroy the computers and free Cillineese from the nobles' iron fist before they strike with the ultimate punishment--death for everyone inside the city walls.

 

Review

 

Precisely Terminated is a debut novel from young Amanda L. Davis, the daughter of Bryan Davis, who himself is the author of the “Dragons in our Midst” series. 

 

This novel follows Monica, a noble turned wall slave, who escaped from being implanted with a computer microchip when she was only four years old.   In the cities of Cantral and Cillineese, microchips are implanted in every human being.  Powerful computers monitor each person’s microchip, and thereby each and every step a person takes for the rest of their lives.  For the nobles, it is ensuring they stay within the boundaries of their city walls.  But for the slaves, it ensures that they follow a strict daily routine: breakfast, work, lunch, work, supper, bath, and finally sleep.  If the slaves are not on schedule, or in a place that it not within their work area, (i.e. in a library when they should be cleaning a noble’s bedroom) the chip will give off powerful shocks increasing with intensity, ending with a final deadly shock.

 

As Monica is without a chip, she is the only hope that the slaves have of ever being able to shut down the computers and free the slaves from the nobles’ rule.  What follows is a twisty maze of events Monica embarks on her quest to find the computers and shut them down.

 

I confess that I haven’t read much by way of dystopian novels, the only ones being the widely popular “Hunger Games” trilogy (which I quite enjoyed), so I wasn’t sure what to expect when I cracked open Amanda’s book.  In many areas, I was pleasantly surprised.  Amanda has her own unique writing voice and style, and it is very consistent throughout the novel.  She has a wonderful imagination and an eye for detail.  I did feel, however, that Monica’s character could have been a little less antagonistic – it felt like she was constantly bickering and complaining to the other characters, and it got rather tiresome to read. You could call Monica a bit of a “reluctant heroine” by the way she viewed her mission.

 

That being said, Precisely Terminated is a fine debut novel for Amanda L. Davis, and shows a lot of promise.  I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Precisely Terminated to youth readers interested in a little sci-fi/dystopian drama.

Book has been provided courtesy of Foundation Distributing, Inc and Graf-Martin Communications, Inc.  Available at your favourite bookseller from AMG Publishers.