‘If they wanted to stay at the top of the pile they had to preserve the pile!’
I’ve just finished Jay Aspen’s novel ‘Resistance’.
What if growing your own food brought harsh punishment; what if a bloated bureaucracy used hunger to keep hold of power? A lesser author might have handed us a society to look at, but Aspen neatly uses anecdotes and recollections to paint a vivid dystopia; we’re shown how our world has mutated into a future society where calories are currency.
In ‘Resistance’ shoppers require planning and high-tech skills to avoid arrest; our mundane chores have become terrifying exercises in presenting a legal front to a dictatorial government. Aspen takes our mundane existence and adds a spice which is both piquant and chilling; in one scene a character prepares for a grocery shop with a fake palm print, yet still nearly gets caught because her food purchases would suggest her family is growing their own food. Data mining is relatively new, but that hasn’t stopped Aspen bringing the concept to life.
Both plausible and horrifying, ‘Resistance’ uses sharply drawn characters and brisk action scenes to narrate a captivating story. I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the series.