Hey it's Marvolo and welcome back to my channel.
So I've been wanting to incorporate literature
into my since the very beginning.
I have it in my about section, I also made
a video earlier on, at the beginning of this
year, or the end of last year, I cant really
remember which, giving a bunch of book recommendations.
Now sometimes I feel like I don't want to
make videos, because all I want to do is read
books.
And I figure that if I can channel that into
a desire to make videos, if I can combine
my love for reading with my desire to make
videos, then it should make it pretty easy,
right, I can read books and feel like I'm
being productive, and I can make videos about
something I really love.
Not that I don't love the other things that
I make videos about.
It's just that sometimes when I'm at a stand
still, don't know what to make a video about,
maybe I can start talking about books.
So I had a suggestion to do book reviews.
Thank you for the idea to DragonFeather, that's,
I don't know, something I've been wanting
to do, but just knowing that someone was interested
in hearing about it helped motivate me to
actually make this happen.
I've actually been wanting to make a video
about this specific book for a while now.
The book I'm going to be talking about today
is Dissolution by Lee S. Hawke.
Lee is a young author, and he lives in Australia.
I met him through the Nanowrimo, Nanowrimo,
I don't really know how it's pronounced.
National Novel Writing Month.
We have a group on facebook where we discuss
our novel writing during the month of November,
and throughout the rest of the year, and I
met him on there.
He wrote another book, a book of short stories,
and it was called Division, and I was a beta
reader on that novel.
If you'd like to hear more about Division,
and have me tell you more about the beta reading
process, I'd love to do that in a different
video.
In I think early March, Lee sent me a message
on Facebook asking if I would be interested
in reading Dissolution and giving him some
of my thoughts on it.
I read the book.
I devoured the book.
And I meant to take notes as I read it but
it just ended up being so good that I couldn't
stop and take notes.
So I read the whole book, told him hey I just
finished the book, it was amazing, let me
collect my thoughts.
Then I took about another week to read it
more slowly and take notes.
And that's the thing I do when I review another
person's book.
I try to be as detailed as I can, because
I want to give them the in depth review that
I would want from someone.
Shut up computer.
I have my computer out because I want to be
able to reference the review.
Now I'm not going to tell you everything I
said to him, because that will spoil the whole
book.
So when I do these reviews, I want to keep
the majority of it spoiler free, and if I'm
about to give any spoilers, I will make sure
to tell you spoilers.
Maybe I'll flash it on the screen.
So Lee Hawke's novel dissolution is more of
a novella.
It's pretty short.
It's, I don't know, right around 200 pages.
Maybe a little under 200.
Over 100 pages though.
It is a first person narrative dystopian novel.
This book I find to be really relevant to
today's society, and I really would recommend
that everyone check it out.
It's only 99 cents for the ebook on Amazon,
and that's all I read.
And I just think that it's very very relevant.
His novel deals with talking about corporations,
and how corporations are viewed as people,
or as more important than individual people.
Just a lot of what is dealt with here reminds
me, just makes me think of, the way capitalism
could be pushed.
Like going further than capitalism.
Living with capitalism, corporations are viewed
to be people, or just about as important as
people.
In some ways, the beginning of this novel
reminded me of the Divergent series, if you've
read that.
If you've read Divergent, and you liked it,
you would probably like this one.
So sort of like in Divergent, everyone is
separated off into different, instead of factions,
they're like corporations that people work
for.
And when you reach a certain age, the corporations
place a bid.
Like an amount of money that the rest of your
life working for them basically is worth to
them.
They're bidding on you.
You are the product, and they're buying your
work for the rest of your life.
It's a very fast paced novel, because it's
so short, but I feel like you get a lot of...even
though it's so short and quick paced, there's
still a lot of depth to it.
It's also a very light read.
It's one of those books that you could probably
sit down in one night and just read through
it, if you're willing to, you know, lose a
little bit of sleep.
Spoilers!
One of these corporations that people work
for is sort of like the science corporation,
and a lot of what they do is testing on on
other humans.
The main character's parents couldn't have
a child, so they made a deal with the corporation
that her daughter would be subject to different
types of testing, and these types of testing
ended up giving her almost super powers.
But when it came time for corporations to
bid on her, and she wanted to get far away
from this human testing corporation, and go
work basically kind of as a mechanic.
Working on tech stuff.
She wanted to get away, but no one bids on
her, and she doesn't know what's happening.
And then she goes on the run, because she
finds out that essentially they're ready to
kill her.
They're ready to get rid of her.
They've learned whatever they could from the
tests they did on her, and now it's done,
and she needs to be eliminated.
I think that lovers of Sci-fi will enjoy this
series as well, because throughout the novel
everyone has sort of like a, I don't know,
sort of similar to the idea of Google Glass.
People have like a headset, and they're seeing
the world through augmented reality.
And there are all sorts of augmented reality
aspects of being able to send emails, and
being able to talk to people without any click
of buttons, just basically through your thoughts,
but through hardware of course.
When she goes on the run, she has to turn
off all of her augmented reality devices in
order to run from them, because you know,
like our own cell phones and everything, they
have tracking devices in them.
So cell phones are already kind of like our
own augmented reality.
I saw this as a further extension of it.
Since the day you were born, you haven't even
seen the world without, you know, this augmentation
of reality, and all of a sudden you have to
turn that off, you know.
Like a more extreme version of you having
to toss out your cell phone and your computer
and go on the run.
Some of my favorite lines in this novel were
just dealing with the fact that humans, even
though this seems so extreme, humans haven't
ever really been so different from this.
"We've always eaten each other."
and "We've always sold ourselves, for the
right prices."
It's so true.
Even though this is a more extreme dystopian
novel, it's still reflecting parts of our
society that exist today, and have existed
for as long as human society has existed.
So every time I read a dystopian novel, I
just find it to be disturbingly familiar.
The aspects that are taken from modern society,
and the little pieces that they twist that
just seem just a little different from our
reality, but not so far off.
And these books never seem so far fetched.
And that's what makes it so euuuhg every time
you read it.
But that's what makes it so good too.
It makes you really think about the things
that are wrong with our society, and think
about ways we can improve it, to help to prevent
these dystopian disasters from coming to be.
But really in a lot of these dystopian novels
the only difference is that the lies and the
corruption are just brought to the surface.
And in our reality today, it's not so different.
We just don't see as much of the corruption.
The chaos stays hidden from us.
This book in particular just seemed like a
very plausible future, and one that I do not
want to live in.
Alright, I hope this review gave you a good
idea of the novel Dissolution.
I will leave a link down in the description
to where you can find it on Amazon, and a
link down to Lee's website as well, so that
you can find out more about him and maybe
check out Division if you're interested, and
find out updates on any of his future projects.
But that's going to be it for this video.
Thank you so much for watching.
If you liked this video, please give it a
thumbs up.
And let me know what you think about this
book review series I'm starting.
Let me know what type of books you enjoy,
and what genres of literature you would like
to hear about.
If you have any questions, you can leave them
down in the comments below.
You can find all of my social media information
down in the description.
If you aren't already, be sure to subscribe,
so you can stay updated for the next time
I make a video.
But that's it for now.
I love you guys and I'll see you again soon.
