Customer Reviews

Deprivers

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Steven-Elliot Altman can never decide what direction the book should go. So we get sci-fi, social statements, intrigue, and on and on and repeat. I started the book and thought, oh, so cool, but that was replaced as I continued with oh, here we go. Way too confusing. The authur can write but the message in this one isn't consistant.

This book is classic X-Men, you just need to substitute the word "Depriver" for "Mutant." Actually, the mutation is that in near future some people will develop the ability to deprive other of particular senses (sight, taste, balance) by touch. Once the government finds out about it, they want to pass registration acts and require deprivers to wear gloves. Like I said, its X-Men Revisted.

In part two of the book, a "normal" who married a depriver is on a quest to find out who killed his wife. Again, this strikes me as straight out of the Fugitive.

The derivative nature of this book notwithstanding, it's not a bad read. The pace moves quickly and some of the characters are moderately interesting. Makes a good book to read on a plane.

Steven-Elliot Altman's Deprivers is as frightening as the Hot Zone and reminiscent of the Aids scare of the 80's. Told through compelling characters it seems like it could be true, or right around the next corner.

Be careful who you touch. You'll get more than cooties.

Highly Recommended!

When the touch of another can change you forever, you are forced to wear your most private thoughts on your sleeve. This is the case with the characters in Deprivers and it makes the action all the more compelling for the personal choices motivating it. From a felon made to consider the ethics of crime to an agent of justice tempted to trade his morals for vengeance, the inhabitants of this world fully reflect the spectrum of fear and courage each of us must face in light of a mortal consequence, be it terrorism, the AIDS epidemic, racism or religious persecution. If you prefer a little meat on the bones of your thriller, this is the book for you.

He turned a handicap into a high paying career as an assassin for hire. Robert Luxley has a "talent" that allows him to paralyze a person with one touch for fifteen minutes, enabling him to make a clean kill. He doesn't know that there are others like him suffering sensory deprivation syndrome (SDS) until he meets Cassandra. She too is a Depriver who wants his help finding her twin brother Nicholas, kidnapped by a radical group of Deprivers.

While Cassie's brother is in captivity, he learns that the government is on the verge of discovering them and outing them to the general public. The extremists, led by Governor Tynsdale, want federal laws mandating that Deprivers register and wear gloves at all times. When Nicholas breaks free of his confinement he meets Cassie and their underground group at their New Jersey house. They and other deprivers fly to Holland to announce their existence before the government can put their own spin on SDS.

DEPRIVERS is a raw, compelling and thought-provoking work of science fiction that leaves readers very unsettled because they project the official treatment of Deprivers onto what has happened to groups in post 9/11 society. The audience will believe that the government will stereotype all Deprivers into one group, spun as dangerous and thus rationalize second class citizenship. There are many heroes in this book who use whatever weapons at hand to diffuse tensions and hostilities between Deprivers and normals.

Harriet Klausner

I loved this book. This idea is excellent--the syndrome created by the author is seems like it could be for real. The premise is scary and the characters are excellent. I highly recommend this book for anyone who enjoys a good pageturner!

Its funny that another reviewer said this was "X-men meets the fugitive." Before I started to write this I was thinking of what this book reminded me of and all I could think of were comic books in prose form. I especially thought of the really bad X-men movies that brought a legion of wacky characters together in a fight of good vs. evil.

This book was really bad because it starts off with zero character development. We jump into the story with no idea why we should give a damn about these people who feel so sorry for them selves. The story skips around from one character to another and an incredibly cheesy world in conflict plot arises. Lastly, the writing here is painfully bad. I think that the only reason this book was published is because it really felt like a B movie and perhaps they were hoping for a movie deal.

It seems like the last decade Hollywood has been producing an endless supply of comic book based movies that differ little from one another. Every once in a while one of these is watchable I suppose, but the majority of these films are trash. And then at the bottom of the heap are a few films that are so bad and so uninspired that it kind of takes your breath away just to watch the trailer and contemplate them ('Batwoman,' or 'Daredevil' to name a couple recent ones). That is how this novel feels.