MORE PERFECT by Temi Oh

5 stars

This sci-fi book opens in a British near future where most humans have gotten a high-tech brain implant called Pulse that instantly connects them to a global internet named Panopticon and each other, including the ability to share visual memories. Loneliness has become a thing of the past. Crime basically eradicated with the brain tech including an algorithm that can detect future potential crimes, but it means that innocent people are getting arrested in advance. Pulse enables both the company creating it and the government unprecedented control over its users.

And, of course, this society has its version of Luddites who harbor deep suspicions about pernicious uses of the tech, have refused to get it, and have even retreated to form their own tech-free encampments in the wilderness. A movement is afoot by the government and the tech company to force everyone to get the brain plant, with the urgency of a pending vote and increasingly violent protests against it.

In telling the tale, Oh riffs on the classical Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, the story where Orpheus has a chance to lead his love Eurydice out of Hades but only if he resists looking back at her, which ultimately he cannot do, vanquishing Eurydice forever back to the god of the underworld. In Oh’s hands, the false dream state induced by Pulse becomes the labyrinth of the underworld from which in a role reversal the girl must rescue the boy.

Orpheus of the future has been raised in complete isolation on a remote sea island with his father who eschews all technology. Tight lipped about his past, Orpheus’s Dad teaches him survival skills and old-fashioned book driven learning. Until the day when troops come, Dad dies, and Orpheus gets taken prisoner by the government. They give him a brain implant against his will and infuse his mind with false memories of a more traditional, compliant childhood to the point that Orpheus struggles to separate his own memories from those served up to him in his dreams. He becomes a coder, specializing in the dream-state during which false memories get served up. This same dream state becomes used as a prison for potential criminals, entrapping them in an endless loop of false dreams.

Moremi has a conventional childhood, except for getting her Pulse a bit on the older side, and she dream only of becoming a professional ballet dancer. She also suffers from recurring depression She falls for Orpheus and wants to follow him to the ideal dreamscape he’s been coding. Their haunting romance drives the book forward.

Ultimately, Oh creates all-too-believable world in which technology goes amuck, and a corrupt government and greedy corporations have to be stopped in their tracks to save what ultimately makes us human.

Thanks to Gallery Books, Saga Press & NetGalley for an advanced reader’s copy.

Stacy DeBroff

Stacy DeBroff, founder and CEO of Mom Central.com and social and digital consultancy, Influence Central, is a social media strategist, attorney, and best-selling parenting author. A sought-after expert for national media, she trend-spots regularly with national brands and speaks frequently to national and international audiences on a wide range of subjects, including influencer marketing, social media, entrepreneurship, and consumer trends. A passionate cook, gardener, reader, and tennis player, she adores this new chapter of post-college-age parenting.