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Seoul Survivors by Naomi Foyle
Apr. 21st, 2016 11:12 pmThe Blurb On The Back:
According to the Mayan Calendar the world as we know it is about to end – but despite the threat of impending eco-apocalypse, Sydney Travers, an impetuous blonde runaway, is determined to reinvent herself as a top hi-tec fashion model in Seoul. The glitzy Asian metropolis is also a haven for Damien Meadows, an inept drug smuggler and untrained English tutor desperate to buy a fake passport to the planet’s safest terrain. For Lee Mee Hee the road to the city is slick with tears: grieving the loss of her newborn son to famine, she lets a kind Foreign Aid medic smuggle her from North to South Korea in the bottom of a truck.
Assessing all three from a seclude mountain villa is Dr Kim Da Mi, a maverick Korean-American bioengineer with a visionary scheme to redesign humanity and survive the coming catastrophe. Mee Hee and her fellow refugees are offered sanctuary – in return for signing up as surrogate mothers – but convincing prime Caucasian specimens Sydney and Damien to donate their DNA is a more complex procedure. Over a long hot summer, seduction bleeds into coercion and mutual betrayal, until Lucifer’ Hammer, the long-prophesied meteor, nears the Earth and the ruthless forces backing Dr Kim demand a sacrifice …
( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )
The Verdict:
Naomi Foyle’s cyber thriller has some great ideas and slick plotting and I loved the South Korean setting but for me it lacked an emotional heart, particularly as every character except Mee Hee has their own personal agenda that involves manipulating and using the people around them, which made it difficult for me to root for or empathise with any of them. I loved the portrayal of technology here – the way Foyle shows the evolution of phones as design accessories was great – but at times there was too much going on, e.g. the meteor (which only some people take seriously), nuclear terrorism, the idea of building surrogate bodies, genetic manipulation, futuristic theme parks – so that not all of them were, for me, developed in a coherent way, which robbed some of them of their potency. The characters at times risk also falling into cliché – notably Dr Kim (whose motivations don’t get sufficiently explored) and Johnny Sandman (who’s a violent abuser with woman problems) and I was concerned that Mee Hee is a completely passive character who is never in control of her destiny. While this book didn’t quite come good for me, there is nevertheless enough here for me to want to check out Foyle’s other work.
According to the Mayan Calendar the world as we know it is about to end – but despite the threat of impending eco-apocalypse, Sydney Travers, an impetuous blonde runaway, is determined to reinvent herself as a top hi-tec fashion model in Seoul. The glitzy Asian metropolis is also a haven for Damien Meadows, an inept drug smuggler and untrained English tutor desperate to buy a fake passport to the planet’s safest terrain. For Lee Mee Hee the road to the city is slick with tears: grieving the loss of her newborn son to famine, she lets a kind Foreign Aid medic smuggle her from North to South Korea in the bottom of a truck.
Assessing all three from a seclude mountain villa is Dr Kim Da Mi, a maverick Korean-American bioengineer with a visionary scheme to redesign humanity and survive the coming catastrophe. Mee Hee and her fellow refugees are offered sanctuary – in return for signing up as surrogate mothers – but convincing prime Caucasian specimens Sydney and Damien to donate their DNA is a more complex procedure. Over a long hot summer, seduction bleeds into coercion and mutual betrayal, until Lucifer’ Hammer, the long-prophesied meteor, nears the Earth and the ruthless forces backing Dr Kim demand a sacrifice …
( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )
The Verdict:
Naomi Foyle’s cyber thriller has some great ideas and slick plotting and I loved the South Korean setting but for me it lacked an emotional heart, particularly as every character except Mee Hee has their own personal agenda that involves manipulating and using the people around them, which made it difficult for me to root for or empathise with any of them. I loved the portrayal of technology here – the way Foyle shows the evolution of phones as design accessories was great – but at times there was too much going on, e.g. the meteor (which only some people take seriously), nuclear terrorism, the idea of building surrogate bodies, genetic manipulation, futuristic theme parks – so that not all of them were, for me, developed in a coherent way, which robbed some of them of their potency. The characters at times risk also falling into cliché – notably Dr Kim (whose motivations don’t get sufficiently explored) and Johnny Sandman (who’s a violent abuser with woman problems) and I was concerned that Mee Hee is a completely passive character who is never in control of her destiny. While this book didn’t quite come good for me, there is nevertheless enough here for me to want to check out Foyle’s other work.
