The Synesthete

Rating:
Summary: The Synesthete
Review: This is the future folks. This is how we want the world to be. You think not? The read the entire book just to see the ending. That's how I see the world over the next twenty to fifty years. What Kernan is saying seems more science fact than fiction.

While I have a difficult time believing in human and computer interfaces (and 3-d goggles don't count) I have no problem believing in hackers and their ilk. Yes, Carly is a hacker but of an entirely different sort. As you read through this, imagine someone who could do what she can and then imagine someone far less ethical than her. Okay, her first outside job is an illegal one but as you read this try to convince me that something very much like it isn't happening today much less twenty years from now.

My only real problem with the book isn't in the hardware end of the science, even if it is science fiction. That came off as very believable and scares me. I mean, retinal scanners in hatbands? I have no idea if the technology exists to do something like this but the way the world is going, it will. You won't be able to buy postage stamps without the government knowing who your first girlfriend was.

Anyway, Carly seemed somewhat less than real. Meaning? You don't really get to meet her until near the end of the story. Yes, her character does quite a bit between the beginning and where her personality seems to emerge. Still, something more compelling belongs in the beginning of the sotry so that you identify more with her and not with the people she inadvertantly kills.

I liked it and would recommend you read it if only to get a sense of where the world is going. It might not be twenty years, but it will happen.

Unfortunately.