Title: The Amateurs
Author: Liz Harmer
Genre: Science Fiction
Pages: 336 (Harcover)
Publisher: Knopf Canada
Publication date: March 21st, 2018
Synopsis from The Amateurs' Goodreads page
PINA, the largest tech company in the world, introduces a product called port. These ports offer space-time travel powered by nostalgia and desire. Want to go back to when your relationship was blossoming? To when your kids were small, or when your parents met? To Elizabethan England? To 1990s Seattle? Easy. Step inside the port with a destination in mind, and you will be transported. But there is a catch: it's possible that you cannot come back. And the ports are incredibly seductive, drawing in those with weaker wills...
Nearly everyone buys the ports, and soon, nearly everyone is gone. Those who are left attempt to sort out how to survive in this world nearly devoid of humans. Animals are increasing in numbers, roads are degrading, the Internet is down, and gasoline is running out. The survivors are also left with numerous unguarded ports, which are as mysterious as they are threatening.
In this world we follow a motley crew camped out in the abandoned mansions and stately church of a former steel-town that has seen its own share of collapse and growth. The group of about thirty adults and children are looting and surviving on what food they can find. But the harsh winter is fast approaching--do they make the choice to head south as a group, or wait to see if their loved ones will return through the ports?
The Amateurs focuses on a thirty-something artist and shopkeeper, Marie. She has never gotten over her ex-husband, Jason, and stubbornly hopes he'll return to her from his new marriage and from the world beyond the port. Meanwhile, in California, life at PINA is breaking down. Brandon, the former head of PR and right-hand man to Albrecht Doors, the mad genius who invented the ports, decides to get out while he still can. He steals a solar-powered car and drives north-east, where he hopes to find his missing mother, and start a new life, maybe a family. And there he meets Marie.
I received a finished copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review -- Thank you Penguin Random House!!
I was SO insanely excited for this book when I saw the possibility of getting a copy for review. I'm a massive science fiction nerd and when I read the synopsis for this book, I was SUPER excited. Not only that, but it takes place in Canada, in Southern Ontario, which is where I'm from! Nothing is cooler than going into a book and when the characters talk about streets and roads and being able to picture them perfectly because you have been to the city multiple times (it takes place in Hamilton!). So that made me have really high expectations, and although I enjoyed the book, it did have some flaws in my opinion.
The Amateurs takes place in the not so far future, and makes the reader contemplate what every character in the book contemplates - if you could go anywhere, any time, where would you go? and, WOULD you go? This book really makes the reader question their beliefs and their values, and that is really refreshing in a science fiction book.
I really enjoyed a lot of the aspects of the story. I loved the setting of the story because I was so easily able to connect with it, because I've been to Hamilton. I loved the way that the author was so descriptive of the buildings and the escarpment, how even little details were very well described, which made it really easy to picture.
I also really enjoyed how the author made some outlandish ideas seem just commonplace. All the tech, PINAphones and other tech devices, were spoken of as though they exist in the real world and we should know exactly what they are. The only qualm I had about this is I wish that she had described them a little better - there were some things I was a little confused about, and other things that my nerdy self wanted a bit more detail of.
I also enjoyed the characters themselves. There were not too many in the story, so it was very easy to keep them all straight and to remember which ones are which. I loved how they all fought and bickered and communicated, but were still families and still were able to work together.
The only problem that I had with the characters were that they didn't seem to develop a drastic amount. I found that only the main male and the main female character developed in any truly noticeable way, and even then, it was really only one major decision by either of them that showed any true development. I wish there had been a bit more from them; I feel like the story could have gone in so many more directions if there had been more monumental moments and decisions from the two main characters.
The plot itself I enjoyed, and the idea of the story itself I absolutely loved. I just wish that there had been more of the time during which the ports were being created and going around the world, when the population had been drastically dropping. The book itself takes place completely after the world's population has been demolished by the ports, and I feel like if there had been more talk and more flashbacks of the time during the ports that more could have happened in the book itself.
Overall, I thought that the book was dark, but enlightening, and that it was bold and one of the most creative books that I have read in a long time!
Overall - ★★★★☆
Synopsis from The Amateurs' Goodreads page
PINA, the largest tech company in the world, introduces a product called port. These ports offer space-time travel powered by nostalgia and desire. Want to go back to when your relationship was blossoming? To when your kids were small, or when your parents met? To Elizabethan England? To 1990s Seattle? Easy. Step inside the port with a destination in mind, and you will be transported. But there is a catch: it's possible that you cannot come back. And the ports are incredibly seductive, drawing in those with weaker wills...
Nearly everyone buys the ports, and soon, nearly everyone is gone. Those who are left attempt to sort out how to survive in this world nearly devoid of humans. Animals are increasing in numbers, roads are degrading, the Internet is down, and gasoline is running out. The survivors are also left with numerous unguarded ports, which are as mysterious as they are threatening.
In this world we follow a motley crew camped out in the abandoned mansions and stately church of a former steel-town that has seen its own share of collapse and growth. The group of about thirty adults and children are looting and surviving on what food they can find. But the harsh winter is fast approaching--do they make the choice to head south as a group, or wait to see if their loved ones will return through the ports?
The Amateurs focuses on a thirty-something artist and shopkeeper, Marie. She has never gotten over her ex-husband, Jason, and stubbornly hopes he'll return to her from his new marriage and from the world beyond the port. Meanwhile, in California, life at PINA is breaking down. Brandon, the former head of PR and right-hand man to Albrecht Doors, the mad genius who invented the ports, decides to get out while he still can. He steals a solar-powered car and drives north-east, where he hopes to find his missing mother, and start a new life, maybe a family. And there he meets Marie.
THOUGHTS
I received a finished copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review -- Thank you Penguin Random House!!
I was SO insanely excited for this book when I saw the possibility of getting a copy for review. I'm a massive science fiction nerd and when I read the synopsis for this book, I was SUPER excited. Not only that, but it takes place in Canada, in Southern Ontario, which is where I'm from! Nothing is cooler than going into a book and when the characters talk about streets and roads and being able to picture them perfectly because you have been to the city multiple times (it takes place in Hamilton!). So that made me have really high expectations, and although I enjoyed the book, it did have some flaws in my opinion.
The Amateurs takes place in the not so far future, and makes the reader contemplate what every character in the book contemplates - if you could go anywhere, any time, where would you go? and, WOULD you go? This book really makes the reader question their beliefs and their values, and that is really refreshing in a science fiction book.
I really enjoyed a lot of the aspects of the story. I loved the setting of the story because I was so easily able to connect with it, because I've been to Hamilton. I loved the way that the author was so descriptive of the buildings and the escarpment, how even little details were very well described, which made it really easy to picture.
I also really enjoyed how the author made some outlandish ideas seem just commonplace. All the tech, PINAphones and other tech devices, were spoken of as though they exist in the real world and we should know exactly what they are. The only qualm I had about this is I wish that she had described them a little better - there were some things I was a little confused about, and other things that my nerdy self wanted a bit more detail of.
I also enjoyed the characters themselves. There were not too many in the story, so it was very easy to keep them all straight and to remember which ones are which. I loved how they all fought and bickered and communicated, but were still families and still were able to work together.
The only problem that I had with the characters were that they didn't seem to develop a drastic amount. I found that only the main male and the main female character developed in any truly noticeable way, and even then, it was really only one major decision by either of them that showed any true development. I wish there had been a bit more from them; I feel like the story could have gone in so many more directions if there had been more monumental moments and decisions from the two main characters.
The plot itself I enjoyed, and the idea of the story itself I absolutely loved. I just wish that there had been more of the time during which the ports were being created and going around the world, when the population had been drastically dropping. The book itself takes place completely after the world's population has been demolished by the ports, and I feel like if there had been more talk and more flashbacks of the time during the ports that more could have happened in the book itself.
Overall, I thought that the book was dark, but enlightening, and that it was bold and one of the most creative books that I have read in a long time!
Overall - ★★★★☆
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