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Jump to navigationJump to searchBlinded by the Light by Joe Kipling (view source)
Revision as of 07:33, 1 August 2013
, 07:33, 1 August 2013no edit summary
I do enjoy a good dystopian story and so I loved the premise behind ''Blinded by the Light''. How would society reassert itself after a devastating virus that killed off most of the population? Would the rich retreat behind electrified fences and maintain the standard of living they had before things went wrong? You can see it as a very real possibility, can't you? Would their leaders keep their population in the dark about what was really going on? Well, leaders do that already, don't they? Would they detain and torture dissenters? Perhaps the less said about that the better.
There's a good plot going on. ''Blinded by the Light'' is the first book in a planned trilogy. It serves to introduce us to Kipling's dystopian world, with its privileged Neighbourhood and Light leadership pitted against the Union's Outside. It's also MaryAnn's story. She is a spoiled, pettish, superficial girl at the outset but she must make a journey of painful discovery and she's a very different, more principled, more mature, person by the book's final pages. I like a good picaresque and MaryAnn's is an enlightening one. It makes me wonder how I would react in similar circumstances. I'll be interested to see how she develops further in subsequent books.
''Blinded by the Light'' is a great read, especially for fans of the dystopian genre. On occasion, it stray into wordy territory and some passages could do with less description and more focus. And once or twice, I cocked a bit of a side-eye - it seems unlikely the Light's Director would locate torture rooms beneath his own house or do his own mangling of prisoners. But these are nitpicks. Kipling has given her readers a credible world, interesting characters and a plot you can get into. And it asks some pointed questions. Is the means ever worth the end? What is the difference between a freedom fight and a terrorist? What is more important: family or cause? What more could you ask from a book?
