JEREMIAH JERICHO: ALLOWANCE
by Azariah Scott
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Jeremiah just turned 16 and found out that he inherited something from his dead father: a computer chip embedded in his brain. The chip gives him the ability to hack other people\’s minds. The problem starts with an additional voice in his head from the chip, then his family\’s hidden issues come to the surface, and, of course, the government wants the chip back under their control. All the things a teenager doesn\’t want to be bothered with. Jeremiah has to make a choice to be either the better person his dad was trying to get him to be or just shrug it off and be as he wants to be, unbothered. ~Buy JEREMIAH JERICHO: ALLOWANCE at Amazon ~Check out the author’s website
REVIEW
This book addresses the question of what to do when your life gets turned up-side-down, and it presents it in an intriguing way. I’ve read my fair share of books where technology implants are common in the story world, and most of those have presented that technology in both a positive and negative light. Not to say the main character’s chip doesn’t have good and bad points, but this book has more of a “and…now what do I do with this thing” angle. It was an interesting take on implanted technology.
Unfortunately, this book didn’t quite do it for me beyond the concept. The writing style follows more of a “stream of consciousness” feel, which isn’t a style I prefer. It also switched between memories and present day, but I lost track of what was memories and what was present day. The big conflict, as the blurb suggested, was “will the main character care or just keep not caring.” I initially thought this would be a nice difference from the big-picture books, but it ended up not quite working for me either. At first, the internal conflict was interesting, but a couple of hundred pages later, I felt like the main character’s wheels were spinning. I wanted a decision, and one didn’t seem to be forthcoming.
I also think I wasn’t the right audience for this book. The main character thinks very much like a teenage guy. Actually, that may be inaccurate. The main character thinks like what people would expect from a teenage guy—girls, food, sex, food, sex, girls, conflict a bit. Again, this was cool at the beginning, but after a while, it made me lose interest, both in the story and the main character. If this appeals to you, this book will probably be enjoyable. For me, there was a lot of cool stuff in here, but I got caught behind too many things for the cool stuff to hold my interest.