Do you enjoy reading books with “gripping” dialogue where almost every sentence ends in an exclamation mark for dramatic tension!!?!!?!!! This is definitely the book for you.
Do you enjoy reading books where there are endless passages of info-dumpy dialogue with brief passages of confusing action? This is definitely the book for you.
Do you enjoy political thrillers with shadows organisations with names like Them, Deluge, DG, YD, tERROR, the IDF, and many many more? This might be the book for you.
Do you enjoy searching Wikipedia for something and waking up 2 hours later with 200 Chrome tabs open, and no idea what you were originally looking for? This might be the book.
Sigh…
Warmth had a lot going for it – an interesting premise, hot-topic politics, and world inundation… or domination… or maybe both. But it really wasted its opportunity with boring talk-fests, confusing plotlines and interchangeable, forgettable characters who all sound the same.
And then there’s the exclamation marks. Sweet baby jesus does this author love his exclamation marks. Early on in the novel he limits himself to single exclamation marks at the end of his dialogue, but as he passes the mid-point he becomes aware that his novel mostly involves people sitting in small groups explaining things in exotic locations like London, London, Country England, Paris, London… I don’t really know… the only way he seems to come up with to ramp up the tension and drama is to keep adding more exclamation marks.
I shall attempt to explain the plot.
The year is 2027, and there has been a worldwide rise in sea levels.
John is a political advisor to some politician in Australia. He discovers his boss is involved in some sort of global conspiracy that gets his boss killed, him kidnapped and framed for his boss’ murder, then in the middle of the kidnapping he gets re-kidnapped by a group of people who appear to be the ‘good guys’. An extended tour of the Conspiracy Theory pages of the Internet ensues as the group find themselves taking on a new world religion, led by some bloke named Clive, a mysterious organisation called Them, and assorted other random bad guys.
Oh, and the new religion is called The Delugion. The author manages to limit himself to one little joke about people being Delugional, but that pun was far too little, far too late.
The problem with writing about events which occur in the near-future is that current events are bound to quickly overtake the plot. Wolfson references contemporary events in Australian and world politics, and this might appeal to people who believe in conspiracy theories, but I didn’t care about any of the characters, many of whom seem to wander in and out of the novel for extended periods of time.
As a parting note, I received a copy through NetGalley in return for an honest review, and the copy I received may be an ARC, it was sorely in need of a proofreader, and someone to delete 99% of the exclamation marks before it was published.
Barely 1/5… because I actually finished it in a bit over a day and a half.
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