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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A Romeo-and-Juliet tale of star-crossed lovers and their conflicted families plays out against a futuristic backdrop shaped by outrageous fashion trends in Armstrong's offbeat debut fantasy. Michael Rivers, heir-apparent to a hi-tech security empire, is poised to wed Nora Gonzalez-Matsu, heiress-apparent to a rival firm, when an assassin's failed attempt on his life humiliates the company and scuttles the nuptials. Though the planned union seemed as calculated as the business merger behind it, incurably romantic Michael believes that Nora, whose lifestyle is governed by the same fashion magazine to which he's addicted, is his soul mate. When he repudiates his father's scheme to marry him into another corporate family and attempts a forbidden reunion with Nora, he discovers nasty realities that have made his coddled life possible. This routine romance plot is virtually secondary to the giddy elaboration of a future world so saturated with advertising and fashion imagery that its most public transactions are orchestrated like runway walks. Though the story runs on a little longer than it should, its playful take on fashionistas of the future is diverting. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

In a future controlled by the fabulously wealthy Families, whose every move is a media event, Michael, 19-year-old RiverGroup heir, is engaged to MKG heiress Nora. Indicative of the business merger their marriage seals, their conversation is coded in quotations from their favorite magazine, Pure H. Just before the wedding, someone tries to assassinate Michael, wrecking the RiverGroup's ratings, confidence in the would-be merger, and Michael and Nora's perfect relationship. Michael questions his father (a terrible businessman, more showman than anything else), everything he thought he knew about life, and the identity of the assassins as he tries to salvage his relationship with Nora despite both Families' objections. He searches the "slubs," where the poor and non-Family live, and visits his estranged, circus-performer mother, which proves enlightening and potentially earthshaking for the RiverGroup. Since so much of it is based on the occasionally morbid Pure H patois, the novel makes frequently strange reading, but Michael's enlightenment and the bizarre family secrets he discovers make it worthwhile reading, too. Regina Schroeder
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Paperback: 200 pages
• Publisher: Night Shade Books (February 21, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1597800651
• ISBN-13: 978-1597800655
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #945,004 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good but not outstanding, February 26, 2007

By	N. Carpenter "I'm a lucky cowboy" (MD USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Think "Romeo and Juliet" meet "Snow Crash". The plot is summarized quite well above, so I won't repeat. This book is, at its heart, a love story set within the context of social parody. Anyone who loves fashion, food, spirits, and all things upper-crusty will find themselves skewered in some way in this book. There are one or two outstanding moments in the book, but otherwise it's fairly predictable and somewhat shallow. The universe created by Armstrong has the opportunity to be compelling and interesting but the opportunity to enrich the world has been missed by this short work.

Not as satisfying as other genre novels, such as Patricia Sullivan's _Maul_, yet still an excellent breakout performance. Hope to see more from this author in the future.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Quirky & Clever Novella But Badly Produced, July 29, 2007

By	Melissa McDowell "Mother of philosophers" (Virginia) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

You've already read the plot summaries. You get the general idea.

Armstrong presents a very clever concept but one not new to those who grew up with "The Medium is the Message." Its realization in this book is uneven--sometimes, as in the opening, wry and engaging, other times tedious and predictable. The language is sometimes so uneven that I wondered whether two different people had shared the writing. I got very, very tired of Father's obscenities and his one-note metaphors; the over/misuse of "like" and "fathom" jarred increasingly. The ending just *happened*, as if the writer had grown tired of his creation. Armstrong certainly has caught the flavor, however, of today's fashion poseurs and the affected dark pseudo-sophistication of their favorite style magazines.

This is not a science-fiction book, it's just fiction, about a dystopia of the post-apocalyptic world. It's also a sendup of Ultra aesthetes, one that Oscar Wilde might appreciate.

A word of warning: The production of this novella is so dreadful that it seriously interferes with the reader's ability to enter the story. On nearly every page (I do not exaggerate) occur missteps that a decent editor would have caught--grammar errors, spelling mistakes, poor punctuation, errors of continuity (exactly WHICH eye is the gray one?), incorrect usage, confusion of vocabulary (e.g., "epithets" for "epaulettes", "sign" for "sine", "wave" for "waive"). It reminded me of long nights spent correcting student essays. It is curious that an author so adept at parodying Conde Nast publications could be guilty of such clumsiness and pratfalls of speech. Standards in this area have certainly fallen throughout the industry, but never have I seen so unprofessional an edition.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This novel's vision of the future and PR is scarily dead-on, March 1, 2007

By	Miknam "Miknam" (New York) - See all my reviews

I work in the marketing communications world and reading this book made me hate myself. Armstrong's vision of the future and PR's effect on it is scarily dead-on. His is a distopian world where everything is part of the branding process and all conversations have messaging.