ARA Review by Alan Baker of World, Incorporated

[Alan Baker]

[Following is an OnlineBookClub.org ARA Review of the book, World, Incorporated.]

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4 out of 5 stars

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Review of World Incorporated: A Modern Dystopia


4 out of 5 stars


I really liked this book, I wanted to love it, but I couldn’t, and it wasn’t the story, it was other things. Ok you may have noticed a lot of commas in the last sentence, and that was one of the issues I had with this book that prevented me from giving it 5 stars, that and some of the writing style (Ok I’m done using commas).


Gariffo tells a story about an assassin who lives in the future where the world’s economies and governments are completely controlled by “supercorporations”. Sliver (I swear I read it as “Silver” for the whole first chapter) is an employee of World Inc. which is one of the super-corporations that run the world. He is given various missions to assassinate targets. Along the way he meets Kelly, the daughter of one of his targets, and Rex a cyborg. Kelly adds some great tension/conflict early on in the novel between herself and Sliver, Rex brought the comic relief.


I’ll start with all the things I liked about the book. First of all, I was drawn in right away. I like futuristic science fiction and I like stories about assassins with crazy skills. This book does not disappoint on those fronts. Sliver goes on multiple missions throughout the book and is very cunning and deadly. I really liked the mission in D.C. and his initial interaction with Rex.


Second thing I liked about the book was the setting. The author did a good job presenting the world, although he could have gotten into more detail about the other corporations, I nevertheless came away impressed with the world building. This is mainly due to the fact that the author did a very good job building up the back story that lead to the stories current time and place. He presented this through news articles that Kelly read in the first half of the book.


Third thing I like about the book was the action and the ending. From about halfway through the book to the end it seemed that every chapter was packed with action scenes that lead to plot twist and turns. I was a little conflicted about the ending, but I didn’t hate it either. I thought the ending was wall developed throughout the story and plausible. It was a surprise and I am all about surprise endings, so that was a plus.


The only gripe I had about this book was the writing style. First, as mentioned, long sentences, with lots of commas, tend to be distracting (Ok last time I swear). Also, the author did way too much narration during the action scenes. There was too much detail about what was happening and all it did was slow down the scenes. In addition, while I liked the back story with the news articles and found it a very interesting read, it should have been better presented in the story. The author had an entire chapter early on in the book in which Kelly read the first set of articles. It was a long chapter and really detracted from the overall story moving forward, especially when I was just starting to connect with the characters and their relationship. Overall, I gave it 4 out of 5 stars and would recommend it. By the way did I mention there were too many commas? Ok, I’m done, promise.

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