Blurred Line

After years of hearing William Gibson plug Jack Womack, I jumped at the chance to buy Womack's Ambient series (with the exception of the second book, Terraplane), when I saw the books listed on BookCloseouts.com. The first book in the series, Ambient, follows Seamus O'Malley, bodyguard and right-hand man of Mister Dryden, who manages the world's most powerful corporation, Dryco. When Mister Dryden orders O'Malley to kill his father, who still retains ultimate control of Dryco, things begin to spiral out of control, thanks to the interference of Avalon, who's a sort of personal sex slave to Mister Dryden, and who O'Malley happens to be in love with. The book is set in a nightmarish future version of New York, where violence and chaos rule. Additionally, a significant portion of the population, called Ambients, are horrifically mutated thanks to radiation exposure.

This novel has garnered many comparisons to Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, due to its linguistic inventiveness. The Ambients speak a language that seems a collection of Shakespearean diction, slang, and religious mysticism -- it's odd to read for the first while, but once you settle in, it offers some of the book's best passages. Also, Mister Dryden and the corporate set tend to use "bizspeak" which appears to be a highly compressed language made up of declaratives and jargon. The book also echoes A Clockwork Orange in its violence -- of course, what would've been called "ultraviolence" in that book is pretty much small potatoes here. In comparison, the nightmarish qualities of this book have been taken to the extreme. If you can stomach the violence (one warning here: much of it is sexual and involves minors), the book is a great read, although the ending struck me as rather abrupt and the big "reveal" of Dryco's evil doings don't really seem connected to any of the events in the book. Still, though, it's a book I definitely won't shy away from recommending to fans of dystopic fiction.


Profile Editor. Writer. 9-5er. Lord of the Dance. Blurredline.com Apodis Publishing Fusion Fragment cterrill(at)blurredline.com Buy Goodbye, Darwin Amazon.com Amazon.ca Chapters.ca Barnes&Noble.com Read it free in PDF Format Buy Blurred Line Amazon.com Amazon.ca Chapters.ca Barnes&Noble.com Read it free in PDF Format The Short Stuff "Learning Magic From Mint" - published May 2007 in Atomjack "Between Eternities" - published October 2005 at Speculative.ca "Smoke and Mirrors" - published June 2005 in Byzarium Submissions Log Total Subs: 25 Acceptances: 3 Rejections: 17 Withdrawals: 3 Subs Out: 2 Quality Blogs Scalzi's Whatever Dave's Blogography Bookslut The Struggling Writer SF Signal the0phrastus Paperback Writer Scribe's Writing Desk Nathan Bransford Lyons Literary LLC The World in the Satin Bag Book In The Oven The Word Perhaps We Learned Something... Words, etc. Archives March 2005 April 2005 May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 June 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 October 2007 November 2007 November 2008 December 2008 January 2009 February 2009 March 2009 Et Cetera Cavan @ Last.fm Cavan @ LibraryThing Feeds Atom Feed RSS Feed	Wednesday, September 19, 2007 - Ambient After years of hearing William Gibson plug Jack Womack, I jumped at the chance to buy Womack's Ambient series (with the exception of the second book, Terraplane), when I saw the books listed on BookCloseouts.com. The first book in the series, Ambient, follows Seamus O'Malley, bodyguard and right-hand man of Mister Dryden, who manages the world's most powerful corporation, Dryco. When Mister Dryden orders O'Malley to kill his father, who still retains ultimate control of Dryco, things begin to spiral out of control, thanks to the interference of Avalon, who's a sort of personal sex slave to Mister Dryden, and who O'Malley happens to be in love with. The book is set in a nightmarish future version of New York, where violence and chaos rule. Additionally, a significant portion of the population, called Ambients, are horrifically mutated thanks to radiation exposure. This novel has garnered many comparisons to Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, due to its linguistic inventiveness. The Ambients speak a language that seems a collection of Shakespearean diction, slang, and religious mysticism -- it's odd to read for the first while, but once you settle in, it offers some of the book's best passages. Also, Mister Dryden and the corporate set tend to use "bizspeak" which appears to be a highly compressed language made up of declaratives and jargon. The book also echoes A Clockwork Orange in its violence -- of course, what would've been called "ultraviolence" in that book is pretty much small potatoes here. In comparison, the nightmarish qualities of this book have been taken to the extreme. If you can stomach the violence (one warning here: much of it is sexual and involves minors), the book is a great read, although the ending struck me as rather abrupt and the big "reveal" of Dryco's evil doings don't really seem connected to any of the events in the book. Still, though, it's a book I definitely won't shy away from recommending to fans of dystopic fiction. Cavan blogged at 9:55 PM \| 0 comments	Progress Zilch! 0/0 Listening A.J. Croce - "Maybe I'm Amazed" My Music Reading Bright Lights, Big City - Jay McInerney My Library Watching Black Book: B Sweet and Lowdown: C Breakfast on Pluto: B Wishlist Bridge of Sighs - Richard Russo Rachael Yamagata - Elephants...Teeth Sinking Into Heart