Customer Reviews

Pastworld

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Pastworld is a theme park that is run by the Buckland Corporation. It is a complete authentic reproduction of 17th century London. Everything is authentic, the dress, the lack of electricity, even the 17th century laws. Everyone who visits Pastworld has to be authentic, right down to the luggage they carry and the toiletries they use, the entire theme park has been designed that way.

But despite the fact that Pastworld has a few electronic security measures, crime runs rampant within the park. Underground "unofficial" beg and steal from the "gawkers" or visitors to the park, and sometimes do worse than just steal however. There is a notorious criminal that is terrorizing the park. He's known only as the "Fantom" and he murders his victims before removing organs and heads to terrorize the city. But the Fantom has more in mind than just causing some discomfort to the park gawkers, he's looking for someone. A young girl who has no idea she's living in a theme park, someone who can help him carry out his evil plot...

To start off with, I liked the general theme of Pastworld. It sort of reminded me of a cross between "The Truman Show" and a Charles Dickens/Sherlock Holms mystery novel. I thought Ian Beck had a lot of good ideas going for Pastworld.

However, I just could not get into Pastworld. First off, I felt that it was overly violent for a YA audience. I get blood, that's fine, but dismembering, decapitations, and removing organs? Really? I got the idea with the murders, I felt the extra embellishments of violence were unneeded to make the point.

I also felt zero connection to the characters. I found it annoying that the character of Eve, someone who was central to the entire plot of the book was only written about in diary format. Pastworld kept skipping from third person to first person and it distracted from the plot as opposed to adding to it. I just felt that the characters were sort of glossed over in an attempt to further the plot. I didn't feel like any of them had any depth and because of that, I really stopped caring.

Overall, I found Pastworld to be pretty disappointing. It's a shame really because Ian Beck had a really great and original idea that unfortunately just didn't come to fruition for me.

The year is 2050. After the great financial apocalypse, Buckland Corporation built a sky dome, hundreds of feet tall, over London. The city was converted into a theme park designated as Pastworld. Wealthy visitors known as Gawkers travel there to watch its citizens live in the recreated Victorian squalor of the 1800's. It is a primitive world where visitors hope to satisfy their perverse, morbid curiosities by witnessing hangings, amputations and brutal murders, especially murders committed by the Fantom.

The Fantom is a mysterious, black caped figure who disembowels and dismembers his victims. He escapes his pursuers by leaping from tall buildings. He controls the ragged men, an army of street beggars and thieves. He searches for a young girl named Eve who, until recently, believed she was actually living in Victorian London, unaware of a modern world existing outside the domed city. A young visitor, Caleb Brown, is framed by one of the ragged men for murder. With the help of Eve and her circus friends, he tries to escape the hangman's noose as well as escape the clutches of the Fantom.

Dorothy traveled to the Land of Oz, experienced numerous adventures, some of them heartwarming and some of them horrifying, and eventually said, "There's no place like home." When will people learn that happiness can be experienced at home with family and friends? Dreams of traveling to other worlds, whether they exist in the past or the future, can turn into nightmares. This idea has been expressed before in Michael Crichton's "Westworld" and Richard T. Heffron`s "Futureworld" where lifelike androids provide entertainment for wealthy patrons; unfortunately, something goes amiss in these theme parks and there are horrifying consequences.

Ian Beck's superb science fiction horror novel "Pastworld" is a youth-oriented version of "Westworld" and "Futureworld." The central characters are young people, Eve, Caleb, Jago and Bible J, who are all approximately seventeen. They are trapped in Victorian London, victims of a simulated, artificial world controlled by computers. Because Pastworld is covered by a dome, I had fond memories of the classic "Logan's Run," which also involves trapped citizens who endeavor to escape a city of domes.

"Pastworld" is one of the most bizarre, intriguing novels I've read for young adults. Though it is primarily a science fiction horror novel, it has strong elements of mystery and romance. Fast paced and gripping, it raises a lot of moral and ethical questions concerning what vacationers deem as entertainment. Is it moral to keep humans trapped in a world without the modern, technological advances of transportation, education and medicine? Pastworld reminds me of a zoo where visitors goggle and stare at the misfortunes of others. Similarly, many people today enjoy traveling to third world countries where they satisfy a morbid curiosity by watching the suffering of the impoverished.

I grew up enjoying the Hammer horror films that were popular in the sixties and seventies, especially the ones with gothic settings of foggy London during the 1800`s. Frankenstein, Dracula, Jack the Ripper and other supernatural creatures haunted these films. Therefore, I was compelled to read "Pastworld." In a way, I am as guilty as the wealthy visitors who pay to visit this theme park. One of the characters, the Fantom, especially intrigued me since he was dismembering his victims like Jack the Ripper. Other mysterious characters of interest were the beautiful, tightrope walking Eve, the thieving street urchin Bible J, and Caleb Brown, the wealthy young lad who is framed for murder and whose father has been abducted by the Fantom. Who (or what) is the Fantom? That is the mysterious question that compelled me to keep reading.

"Pastworld" is highly recommended reading for all science fiction horror fans ages thirteen and above. With its many hidden dangers, Pastworld is one theme park I do not wish to visit. I'm quite happy living in the year 2009. I'll find happiness with my friends and relatives in the present. Perhaps I'll visit Walt Disney World. At least I don't have to worry about the exhibits eating me ("Jurassic Park"), shooting me in a gunfight ("Westworld") or replacing me with an android ("Futureworld").

Joseph B. Hoyos

I went into this purchase intrigued with the concept that I read on the preview here on Amazon. While at times it was somewhat hard to follow where teh author was going in the book there was enough mysticism to get me through to the end.

After I read it and let it begin to sink in I found that I enjoyed the book even better as I reread some of the chapters that at first seemed somewhat fuzzy when reading it though the first time.

While I would recommend this for older young adults (14-17) due to the complexity of plot and some macabre I feel that the journey is worth it.

In the year 2048, London has created a theme park called Pastworld, in which the whole city of Victorian London is rebuilt under a vast dome. Life as it was in the 1800s is recreated for tourists to experience, complete as if time stood still. Visitors arrive via large airships that float above the dome and lock on to a hatchway that deposits them into an environment where they will experience history as they could never have imagined. Tourists must pay costly ticket fees and pass tests of authenticity to enter Pastworld. They must dress in period clothing and carry nothing inside that is from the future. This is a high security environment, and tourists breaking the law will be subject to criminal justice as it was at the time. If you are unlucky to be found guilty of any crime, you will be tried and jailed if not hung for your misdeeds.

Complete with automatically timed fog, night twinkling stars, sunrise and sunset, visitors to Pastworld feel every nuance of Victorian life and will not believe they are within an artificial world. Authentic vendors, street merchants, clopping horses pulling carriages on cobblestone streets beneath gaslights, pick- pockets, prostitutes, and rag and bone men, all walk the streets as paid residents providing the show. Nightly thefts, muggings and even staged murders complete the picture as one blends into the past of London as if that era never ended. We readers along with the tourists, also enjoy, or are horrified by, a black cloaked mysterious killer, a Buckland creation gone horribly wrong that was intended to allow a first hand encounter with a Jack-the-Ripper-like madman called the Fantom.

The main plot of this wonderfully creative story revolves around a girl named Eve. She is a pretty blond blue-eyed young woman raised by a man named Jack who cares for her and protects her. She is never allowed out alone, and must never venture into Pastworld without him. She oddly has no memories of her childhood and lives in fear, as Jack warns her often that there are people out to harm her. Feeling constricted she one day runs away to join the circus, and soon realizes, all within Pastworld is not what she was taught. Her circus friends give her a rude awakening as they inform her that she is living in a faux world. Jack never told her the truth, that this London was a sham, and that another world outside the dome existed. The other side of this tale regards a father and son who arrive as visitors. Lucius Brown, an original imagineer of Pastworld who created a lot of the early mechanisms and side effects for the park, is here on a mission to contact Jack about an urgent threat to Eve and to the success of Pastworld. His son Caleb never knowing the details about his father's early work here, soon learns the cold hard facts as within their first day, his father is kidnapped and he himself is accused of murder.

Many mysteries are served up to the reader as to who Eve is. How she is tied to Caleb and linked to some extraordinary and horrifying experiments from the early creation days of Pastworld, will have you flipping the pages quickly as this story is quite inventive and engaging. The lives of Caleb and Eve become seriously threatened. Much chaos, murder and mayhem have them fighting for their lives against the Buckland organization and from the famous Fantom who is hunting them down. This is a creative and marvelous blend of The Phantom of the Opera, Ridley Pearson's Kingdom Keeper, and Herve Jubert's Dance of the Assassin. I loved this entertaining novel and hope the author pens more for a series of other Pastworld themes. Part Victorian mystery, part horror, part Sci-fi Steam-Punk, this was 100% fun.

Pastworld is a "theme park" set in the Victorian times of London. The visitors, called Gawkers, get submerged in that lifetime. They must follow strict rules to keep to the authenticity.

The story is about Eve, a girl who was shut away in a house in Pastworld and only let out with her guardian, who runs away to join the circus. She doesn't remember much of her childhood, but she dreams of being free. The story is also about Caleb, a visitor to Pastworld whose life is turned upside down when he's a witness to a murder. Before long, he is labeled as the murderer and his father is kidnapped right before his eyes. He is taken in by a pickpocket named Bible J. And then there's the Fantom. He is a serial killer with a gruesome calling card.

These three characters are all involved in some way - a very shocking way!

PASTWORLD was definitely...interesting. Working for Disney, I saw that this was about a "theme park" and was excited. But I wouldn't exactly call Pastworld a theme park; it's just a city set in the past.

You could definitely tell this book was written by a guy, since it was really gory. I wasn't expecting that, but it didn't turn me off from my reading. Sometimes, I didn't really care about the characters. While I wanted to care about Eve, I didn't feel like there was enough about her for me to feel sympathetic about. That being said, this was a good science fiction/mystery book. I spent a lot of the storyline trying to figure out what was going on, and I would say that about two-thirds of the way through, I finally figured it out. And it was a good twist!

I feel that the ending wrapped up too quickly, as I would have liked to have read more about what happened at the end scene with the Fantom and Eve. Still, a good read overall, though.

Reviewed by: Andrea

This book was definitely...interesting. Working for Disney, I saw that this was about a "theme park" and was excited. But I wouldn't exactly call Pastworld a theme park...it's just a city set in the past.

You could definitely tell this book was written by a guy. The book was really gory. I wasn't expecting that, but it didn't turn me off. And I didn't really care about the characters. While I wanted to care about Eve, I didn't feel like there was enough about her for me to feel sympathetic about.

That being said, it was a good mystery book. I spent a lot of the book trying to figure out what was going on and I would say that about two-thirds of the way through, I figured it out. And it was a good twist! I feel that the ending wrapped up too quickly though. I would have liked to have read more about what happened at the end scene with the Fantom and Eve.

If you like Running Out of Time or The Truman Show then you'll probably like this.

I don't have much to say about this book. It took me a MONTH to read. Because, while the premise is really interesting, it's a slow read. I reads kind of like film noir. Flashing from character to character while to try to solve this "mystery" of the Fantom.

I'm not unhappy that I read it. I still enjoyed the book, I just wish it had been a little less confusing and a little more cohesive.

I must say that this is a good book, bordering on great. I love the setting, 'Victorian' London and I can really see such a theme park being created. I also really enjoyed the fact that the theme park had evolved. It wasn't 100% controlled by the Company. The story idea was fun, and Ian Beck's writing style quickly drew me into the setting and story.

There are a few things that take away from the book, making it merely 'good'. First, while the story draws you in, it's hard to stay because the characters lack depth. Eve, a central character, is only ever written through her diary. Interesting, but it gets old really fast. The other characters are some what easier to get into, but not by much.

Conclusion: This quasi-steampunk book is a fun read and worth the time to read through. Don't expect it to be something you'll reread over and over again, but it does deserve a spot on your bookshelf.

The title, cover, and book jacket description drew me in, and I tried hard to get into and enjoy this book. I like well-realized stories about Victorian times (see the Montmorency series by Eleanor Updale), so I had high hopes, especially since there was also the promise of some science fiction in the mix. I spent most of the time being either repulsed by the gore, confused by the various plot devices, or distracted by the writing style (many run-on sentences and other somewhat sloppy constructions -- makes me wonder more about the editing than the writing, though). Since other reviewers have recommended other books by this author, I'd like to give him another chance.

I was very eager to read Pastworld. I thought the entire premise was very creative and being a fan of the steampunk genre, I thought this was going to be right up my alley. In this book, we have evidently turned London into a giant theme park, retro fitting it back to Victorian times. Everything is authentic to the period all the way down to crime and criminal justice. Pastworld even has it's own version of Jack the Ripper. People pay lots of money to go and visit even with the threat that they might be hanged for any criminal offense, real or trumped up. The author never really explains what's so bad about society in 2048 that would make people want to do this. There is gruesomeness here by way of the "Fantom"; a killer who likes to dismember his victims. I'm not sure why the author felt the need to include all the gruesome details because they seem so out of place with the language of the rest of the book. It just doesn't seem to fit with the rest of the story, and seems to have been added merely for shock value. With all of the innovations that the author has come up with in setting, and all the different themes he seems to have been going for, the plot is rather thin. I did not feel any build up of suspense, and for some reason, the "Fantom" never serves up much terror. I felt rather confused through alot of this book. I think I can understand where he was trying to go, but it just never got there for me.

Other reviewers have remarked that the characters were not well developed and I would have to agree. I think the story would have been so much better if the author would have just spent more time with Eve. I found myself having to work hard to finish this book, because I really didn't care what happened. I won't spoil the ending, but my sci-fi lovers brain was very unsatisfied with some of the lack of explanation. I think that you have to do a better job with the science than that even if it is a YA book.

I won't be recommending this one. I have a hard time imagining any 12/13 year old hanging with this long enough to get into the story. Check out this author's other books! His Trueheart stories are great.