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Year Published: 2013
Book Source: the publisher, via LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers
Publisher’s Summary: “Knox was born into one of the City’s wealthiest families. As a Patron, he has everything a boy could possibly want—the latest tech, the coolest clothes, and a Proxy to take all his punishments. When Knox breaks a vase, Syd is beaten. When Knox plays a practical joke, Syd is forced to haul rocks. And when Knox crashes a car, killing one of his friends, Syd is branded and sentenced to death.
Syd is a Proxy. His life is not his own.
Then again, neither is Knox’s. Knox and Syd have more in common than either would guess. So when both boys realize that the ony way to beat the system is to save each other, they flee. Yet Knox’s father is no ordinary Patron, and Syd is no ordinary Proxy. The ensuing cross-country chase will uncover a secret socity of rebels, test both boys’ resolve, and shine a blinding light onto a world of those who owe and those who pay. Some debts, it turns out, cannot be repaid.
A fast-paced thrill ride of a novel full of nonstop action, heart-hammering suspense and true friendship—just as moving as it is exhilarating.”
Why? I tend to request just about any book that moderately piques my interest on the EarlyReviewers list, and this one sounded possibly interesting. I have a weird “rule” about reading EarlyReviewers books in order, and I just couldn’t manage to finish the previous one for, oh, a year or so…
My thoughts: I picked up this book just before bed, intending to just read a couple chapters and finish it the next day. That didn’t happen. I read a bit, then a bit more, then a lot more, and then decided I might as well just finish it, since the reading was going by quickly. And I was enjoying the reading experience. This is indeed a “fast-paced thrill ride” of a story, with plenty of suspense and pretty well drawn characters in an intriguing dystopian world. The ending has a moderately surprising twist that feels, on the surface, just as “moving” as the synopsis claims. And those are all valid grounds for considering this a “good” dystopia.
But, having finished it and thought about it a bit, I’m not so sure. It felt like the author had a few really cool ideas percolating and then tried to think of a logical reason for those things to happen. And that’s fine; most anyone who’s done any creative writing (myself definitely included) has felt the need to fiddle with logic to make a pet idea work. But sometimes it feels forced. Maybe not at first.
My immediate reaction to the dramatic twist ending was likely exactly what the author intended: a sympathetically tightened throat and nearly misty eye. But after closing the book and thinking about it for a bit, I started to feel manipulated and a tad frustrated–SPOILERS FOLLOW in this paragraph. By its very nature, a virus seeks to spread and replicate (whether a literal, biological one or a cyber one), so why was this the only way to make it work? And, for that matter, how did it work and what kind of a father does that to his only kid? And why did it take so long to mature in one case and so short in another? It’s all too convenient to the author and the dramatic setting.
And, if you think about it too much, the whole scenario starts to unravel into a series of elaborate straw man arguments against, well, a lot—high college prices, Rand’s Objectivism, racism, homophobia, the widening wealth gap, et cetera—in which the worst possible scenarios are set up and “proved” to be wrong so thoroughly and obviously that it’s again a little convenient. That’s not to say that much of those arguments are valid, because they are, and I agree and/or sympathize with much of what the author seems to be promoting. It may be that I’m just growing tired of dystopias, or it may be that I feel a little emotionally manipulated and so am nitpicking too much. Very likely both.
Because there is a lot in this novel that works. Despite the overwhelming sense of authorial necessity, Syd and Knox do feel like real people reacting more or less reasonably, given their strange circumstances. While it was a little oddly employed, the decision to give both characters’ thoughts was a good one, as it helped avoid the worst excesses of dystopian myopia (ha!): it was clearer how people on either side of the proxy/debt problem could rationalize and live within their positions. Marie, the token female, was a little less well drawn, but at least she wasn’t totally useless or just around to be the object of Knox’s incessant flirtation, as she first seemed to be. The inclusion of elements of Judaism was intriguing and added another layer to the socioeconomic/political theorizing, even if I wished it could have been either subtler or more thoroughly embedded into the novel.
So, basically, I have mixed feelings about Proxy. Very likely I will pick up the second installment, if only to see where the story intends to go from here (there are quite a few directions that I can think of). But I probably will be a little emotionally and logically guarded about it, because I’ve already felt like my suspension of disbelief was manipulated, and I don’t know how that reading experience will go. So, while I would recommend this as another intriguing dystopian possibility to those who enjoy the genre, I don’t think it will ever be one of my favorites or a go-to recommendation.