Review of Citizen Zero by Mark Cantrell - Review by Jess Mountifield

Story Overview:

A dystopian glimpse at a future born in an age of austerity and political uncertainty, CITIZEN ZERO is a gripping social satire that exposes our deepest fears and poses a grave warning to any society that abandons the pursuit of social justice...

After austerity came prosperity and stability, but it was bought at a terrible price...

In a surveillance society blind where it matters most, a deadly conspiracy is ready to strike...

A dictatorial Prime Minister, confident of his grip on power, is about to discover the limits of his strength...

A security operative turned terrorist is all set to bring down the man he once helped to steal power...

Welcome to Britain, a nation bitterly divided between rich and poor, as it teeters on the edge of chaos...

And unemployed David Mills is caught in the middle, torn from the woman he loves and thrown in to a terrible struggle to survive…

He’s a ‘zero’, one of the destitute millions, a nobody, but he’s also the one man who might salvage some kind of freedom out of the ruins of the future...

No wonder the Prime Minister wants him dead...

Cover: 12/20

The cover does look a little like it's indie made but it wouldn't put me off too much. It's definitely relevant to the sort of story Citizen Zero is.

Characters: 15/20

I really liked the hero of this story and his love interest and felt deeply for them both in what they had to go through. I was less interested in the rest. There were quite a few stereotypical bad guy types like the PM and his aides but a few of the other 'bad guys' surprised me as well. Several had regrets and their motives were interesting so it kept me curious.

Storyline: 17/20

The plot of this book was well thought out. Not overly complex but it really didn't need to be. And maybe a little predictable given the sort of book it is but I still enjoyed it. I love the concept of freedom and what freedom really looks like and where boundaries should be and this storyline explored all of those sorts of things.

Style: 10/20

For me the style of this book was it's weaker point. I think some people would really enjoy it and it reminded me a lot of Stephen King's earlier work in it's descriptive and very symbolic nature, but I found myself skim reading whole chunks of text to get to more action and dialogue.

For those who like the well described and thought through worlds then you will totally love this book, so I don't actually want to fault the author for this. He picked a style and did it well, it's just not a style I'm particularly fond of.

Spelling and Grammar: 18/20

I don't think I noticed a single typo which is very rare for me but I did have a few formatting issues with the size of the text. For some reason whole paragraphs would appear in a much larger text before going back to the normal size. It only bugged me ever so slightly though so I'm not knocking it much for that.

Conclusion: 72/100

So overall a pretty good book with a lot of world building, description and some well thought through characters. Not perfect, but still worth reading for anyone who likes to look at societal extremes and their consequences, while getting to route for the easy to relate to good guy.

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Amazon US    Amazon UK    Apple    Barnes and Noble    Diesel E-books    Kobo Book    Sony E-books    Smashwords

Connect with the author:

Website: www.markcantrell.co.uk

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