Everything featured in the movies of Emperial, the largest of the Seven Metropolises, is real and is broadcast live on TV and on the Screens. Max Stranger never knows what might happen during his performance in the film.
Like the other Actors, he always has to put his mind to sleep so that the Film Coordinators can activate a whole new consciousness hidden in a special nanochip in his brain. It’s a consciousness of the Movie Character.
When Max starts to play the role with a dominant mind, Coordinators send thoughts through the nanochip forcing the Character to do everything that the script requires.
The worst begins when the ruthless Autarch approves a great production, a post-apocalyptic serial – Seven Players: Season 1 that will have its setting in a ravaged wilderness inhabited by mutated creatures. Max and his girlfriend, Lara, are chosen to play the starring roles. Death can lurk at every turn out there. Anyone can die. Even the leading actor…
Oh wow! This book was so exciting! I don’t believe that I’ve ever read anything quite like this. This was a glorious sci-fi soap opera of a novel. I gave this book 4 stars, a solid 4 as I really did enjoy reading this.
I absolutely loved the concept of the actors basically becoming mannequins that were programmed to follow the script and while being controlled they had no knowledge of what they were up to during their time on set. This premise made me interested to continue reading because I wanted to know why this was happening and what was going to happen next.
The world building in this book was excellent. Emperial was a very dystopian world and the inhabitants were totally oblivious to what was going on. This was a little on the darker side which is to be expected from a book with dystopian nods.
The book was split into 3 pretty distinct parts which were pretty much-set up, oh goodness it’s all happening and, the fall out and explanation. I believe that each part of this book was previously published individually.
There was nothing unique or overly interesting about the main character, Max Stranger (other than him having an absolutely awesome name). Max was such a typical protagonist that he was a little dull. Fortunately the story was so strong that my interests were held. I’d have loved to have learned more about Claudia. There were some interesting background events surrounding Claudia that I’d have loved to have been elaborated on.
This book has been translated into English and there are a lot of points during the book where you can tell as there are some errors such as plurals instead of singular. This didn’t impact my ability to enjoy the book. I hope that this is the beginning of a series as I’d love to read more books set in this world, I want to know what happens next!
Thank you to NetGalley who provided me with a free ebook in exchange for an honest review.
Kapowski Reads 