~Orange City – Review~

Posted on March 25, 2021 by dkhundt

~BLACKTHORN BOOK TOUR~

~About the Author~

Lee Matthew Goldberg is the author of the novels THE ANCESTOR, THE MENTOR, THE DESIRE CARD and SLOW DOWN. He has been published in multiple languages and nominated for the Prix du Polar.

As well as the sci-fi novel, ORANGE City, his first YA series RUNAWAY TRAIN is forthcoming in 2021.

After graduating with an MFA from the New School, his writing has also appeared in The Millions, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, LitReactor, Monkeybicycle, Fiction Writers Review, Cagibi, Necessary Fiction, the anthology Dirty Boulevard, The Montreal Review, The Adirondack Review, The New Plains Review, Underwood Press and others.

He is the editor-in-chief and co-founder of Fringe, dedicated to publishing fiction that’s outside-of-the-box.

His pilots and screenplays have been finalists in Script Pipeline, Book Pipeline, Stage 32, We Screenplay, the New York Screenplay, Screencraft, and the Hollywood Screenplay contests.

He is the co-curator of The Guerrilla Lit Reading Series and lives in New York City. Follow him at LeeMatthewGoldberg.com

Media links:

Website: http://www.leematthewgoldberg.com/bio/

~About Orange City~

What would you do, by way of a second chance at life, if you were selected to live in a hidden City—a place for felons and deformed outcasts, a place for rehabilitation wherein everyone gets a job, a place to live, but there’s one catch—you can never leave—would you agree?

And, what would a dystopian world be without a dictator to rule over its citizens—keeping them firmly under his thumbs as he watches their every move through the pupil on top of the Eye Tower, who has eyes everywhere—they call him the ‘Man,’ a looming, Stalin idolizing figure with multiple robotic limbs the likeness of a monstrous, demented spider as seen by the expendable flys caught in his web.

*Insert full-body-cringe here*

Through fear of being exiled into the apocalyptic region known as the Empty Zone, everyone follows the ‘Mans’ every order to make Promised Land stronger, including Graham Weathered.

Graham Weathered, the book’s main character, who, after ten years working as an advertising executive in the Factory Region of the City, is given the job of testing different flavors of Pow! Soda, Warton, Mind & Donovan Advertising and Concepts’ newest client.

It is only when Graham becomes addicted to the mood-altering soda that he sees the puppeteer holding the strings in his newfound variegated reality, but is it too late to cut the ties that bind him?

You will have to read the book and find out. 😉

~My Thoughts~

ORANGE CITY is the second book that I have read and reviewed by author Lee Matthew Goldberg, THE ANCESTOR being the first—you can read my review here ~THE ANCESTOR~

Though the first half of the ORANGE CITY is a slow build, it is not difficult to like, root for, and get invested in some of the characters—many pawns themselves under the oppressive thumb of the ‘Man,’ specifically Graham, who’s the most fleshed-out within the dystopian world Goldberg created.

I am a huge fan of dystopian, apocalyptic, post-apocalyptic, survivalist stories, so I look forward to reading Book II, LEMONWORLD.

Thank you, Blackthorn Book Tours and Atmosphere Press, for providing me with an eBook of ORANGE CITY in the request of an honest review.

Purchase link:

~Orange City~