Synopsis

Would you trust your developing years to a mysterious organization expecting a successful life in return?

In the midst of the 2040s, Livvy Blunt, a girl with an unquiet mind, lives in confinement. Her home is a monastery, a place of silence and meditation created to keep her mind free from the frivolous matters of the modern world.

The Monastery is a corporation with a clear goal: transform young Empty-heads into skilled Silver-hairs. The means to do that are controversial: uploads of skills to the brain. The more youngsters manage to keep their minds empty of gossip and avoid overthinking life, the more skills can be transferred.

Livvy has a hard time trying to keep her mind idle, but her sacrifice should pay off by the promise of a successful future as a Silver-hair, a professional any recruiter would fight to hire. But when time comes for her to choose her set of skills, she is denied every professional and fun skill she ever longed for.

People say she’s lucky for being selected to the Monasterial Upload Program, but she’s not so sure.

Amazon

Review

What if you could have any skill in the world that you wanted by simply receiving a mind upload? That is the focus of this new YA series and is quite an intriguing one. Set in the future, we meet Livvy who has gone into this program as a young child and purposely keeps her mind free of any information so that when she turns 18, she can become a silver hair and receive an upload of her new skills. The more space you have in your brain, the better the position.

However, something goes awry when Livvy receives a request to meet someone in the garden at midnight, well past curfew. What happens from there is an adventure for Livvy and time for her to reevaluate the path for her life.

This self-discovery journey for Livvy is one that I think many can relate to in their own lives. She thinks that she wants to go down one path but when the opportunity to explore Barcelona where her mother was from, well that was too much of an opportunity to pass up. It challenges what she was led to believe all those years and was uploading skills the way she wanted to live her life? It doesn’t hurt that a few new friends open her eyes to life and what it could be versus what it was scheduled to be through The Monastery.

There is also conflict between warring companies seeking the same technological advances. It is no different than what we might see today. What was interesting was who participated in this battle to save mankind from itself and from big corporations. It made me think what side would I want to be on if I was there.

I loved all of the descriptions of Barcelona and the historical buildings that were explored. I’ve never been to Barcelona but while reading this book I felt like I was there and could envision the sites of this European town.

This is a great start to a new series and I wonder what is in store for Livvy and the gang going forward. We give it 4 paws up.

About the Author

Just another author, with the same set of letters from the alphabet, trying to put them in such order that they could bring joy, excitement, pain, and inspiration — while trying to make a living out of it.

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