I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
The New Agenda by Simone Pond Narrator: Ryan Kennard Burke
Series: The New Agenda #2
Published by Ktown Waters on June 2nd 2014
Length: 7 hrs and 22 mins
Genres: Dystopian
Pages: 298
Format: Audiobook
Source: Provided for review through Audiobook Blast/Boom
Goodreads
In book two, Ava's journey continues as she searches for Chief Morray inside the mainframe network. She needs to stop him before he causes any further damage to civilization. Hitting his archive files, Ava goes back to Morray's teen years before he became a corrupt and tyrannical leader.Society was collapsing but young, idealistic William Morray had hoped his father's acclaimed Repatterning Program--a precursor to the brilliant New Agenda--could get things back on track. They said the Repatterning was for the greater good, but like most advertising it was a lie. The horrifying plan entailed eradicating all cities, homes and people outside of the Elite citizenship. William joins an underground alliance to put an end to the Repatterning and save what's left of civilization. If he can't stop his father in time there won't be anyone left to save.This thrilling young adult sci-fi series follows Ava Rhodes as she fights against Chief Morray to save her people from his maniacal new agenda to control all human life.
Julie’s Review:
The New Agenda is treated more like a prequel than a continuation of the story from The City Center. Ava links into the mainframe to try to find Morray, and finds his memory archive – from there we follow William Morray’s coming of age story. While this was an interesting way to present a prequel, it really didn’t further the story very much as far as what is happening in the “present day” world.
The prequel introduces us to Morray, before he gets to be the evil leader from The City Center. We see him as a compassionate young man, someone who wants to do right in the world and stop his father’s terrible plan, saving everyone from the Elites. Unfortunately, this book suffers from a syndrome I call “throw all the awful things together in one book”. [Spoilers ahead] This book covers the following trigger topics: rape on minors, suicide attempt, mothers sleeping with boys their son’s age, in addition to everything else going on with the battling sides.
The pacing of this book was similar to the first one, where everything happens really quickly and we really don’t get an in-depth feel for the characters or their motivation before something else happens. This might work for a movie, but books are different. So I can’t say that I cared for anyone in this book very much, and that is too bad.
I did find all the “tech” and the plans to “Dollhouse” people’s consciousness interesting. But for the most part, this book didn’t really work for me.
The audio narration was good, though. I enjoyed the narrator’s voices for all the characters.
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