Omega Place by Graham Marks
Dec. 15th, 2007 02:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
They're watching us. All of us. Everywhere we go.
Paul Hendry doesn't know that, but there was a lot Paul didn't know. Becoming part of Omega Place taught him that, and a whole lot more.
Wherever we are, so are the cameras. Eyes wide open, 24/7.
Paul had wanted to leave home. And never go back. Ever. He just hadn't thought through what would happen if his wish came true.
Why are we letting them do that to us?
Nobody except Omega Place seemed to care about all the CCTV and surveillance, and nobody else was doing anything about it.
... And what happens if you try to stop them?
The sheer number of CCTV cameras in the United Kingdom is, I think, a subject that's ripe for thriller fiction and I bought this expecting a tightly written YA thriller that takes a serious look at the issue. I was wrong. This is very much a by-the-numbers novel, populated by underdeveloped characters and a slightly dull plot driven by the central character of Paul, who for me, never really lights up on the page.
The book has an excellent beginning. Paul's mum and stepfather are visited by the police who tell them that Paul has been found shot dead in London. The plot then takes us back to the previous month, when Paul first decided to run away and follows him through what happened, including how he becomes involved with Omega Place after he sees two of their members, Terri and Rob, who are destroying CCTV cameras in Newcastle late one night and leaving Omega Place's Manifesto 3 to explain their activities.
The big problem is that we don't understand why Paul is drawn to them and more disturbingly, Paul doesn't seem to know either. When we meet him, he's set on going down to London and admits to never having been interested in CCTV coverage. However, this changes when he spots Terri in the city and decides to follow her for reasons that he doesn't understand. In fact, we frequently get sentences like "Paul didn't know why he was following her" and "Paul didn't know why he was still with Omega Place" throughout the novel. If he doesn't know, then how is the reader supposed to care? Marks tries to hint that Paul fancies Terri, but it's never really explored and Terri is so underdeveloped as a character (barely interacting with Paul or the other members of Omega Place) that it's difficult to understand the attraction.
The other members of Omega Place are pretty interchangeable, particularly Tommy and Rob, who I frequently confused. Sky, a doped out draft dodger is the closest we come to an interesting character, not least because he adopts a kind of mentor role to Paul. Orlando who heads the group simply isn't on the page long enough to make an impression and I didn't really care about what happened to him in the end.
Marks interchanges between Paul's experiences with Omega Place and the activities of Henry Garden (a Home Office civil servant who seems to be involved in leaking information to the group and who is being blackmailed by a sinister businessman), Dean Mayhew (a mercenary hunting Omega Place) and Jane Mercer (an MI5 officer charged with finding Omega Place and stopping their activities). For me, the inclusion of the adult characters was a mistake. I didn't feel emotionally connected to them or their problems and I didn't think that there was enough tension to what they were doing to make me worry about Paul's safety and whilst they were necessary from the point of view of helping to explain just what Omega Place was set up to do, I found the exposition explaining this to be a little blah.
Marks gives the book an open ending, doubtless to allow for a sequel. Unfortunately, on the basis of this effort, I have no interest in reading it.
The Verdict:
This should have been so much better than it was. Marks fails to create any sense of tension, suspense or action in this book and I really didn't care about Paul or what he was getting into. Very unimpressive.
They're watching us. All of us. Everywhere we go.
Paul Hendry doesn't know that, but there was a lot Paul didn't know. Becoming part of Omega Place taught him that, and a whole lot more.
Wherever we are, so are the cameras. Eyes wide open, 24/7.
Paul had wanted to leave home. And never go back. Ever. He just hadn't thought through what would happen if his wish came true.
Why are we letting them do that to us?
Nobody except Omega Place seemed to care about all the CCTV and surveillance, and nobody else was doing anything about it.
... And what happens if you try to stop them?
The sheer number of CCTV cameras in the United Kingdom is, I think, a subject that's ripe for thriller fiction and I bought this expecting a tightly written YA thriller that takes a serious look at the issue. I was wrong. This is very much a by-the-numbers novel, populated by underdeveloped characters and a slightly dull plot driven by the central character of Paul, who for me, never really lights up on the page.
The book has an excellent beginning. Paul's mum and stepfather are visited by the police who tell them that Paul has been found shot dead in London. The plot then takes us back to the previous month, when Paul first decided to run away and follows him through what happened, including how he becomes involved with Omega Place after he sees two of their members, Terri and Rob, who are destroying CCTV cameras in Newcastle late one night and leaving Omega Place's Manifesto 3 to explain their activities.
The big problem is that we don't understand why Paul is drawn to them and more disturbingly, Paul doesn't seem to know either. When we meet him, he's set on going down to London and admits to never having been interested in CCTV coverage. However, this changes when he spots Terri in the city and decides to follow her for reasons that he doesn't understand. In fact, we frequently get sentences like "Paul didn't know why he was following her" and "Paul didn't know why he was still with Omega Place" throughout the novel. If he doesn't know, then how is the reader supposed to care? Marks tries to hint that Paul fancies Terri, but it's never really explored and Terri is so underdeveloped as a character (barely interacting with Paul or the other members of Omega Place) that it's difficult to understand the attraction.
The other members of Omega Place are pretty interchangeable, particularly Tommy and Rob, who I frequently confused. Sky, a doped out draft dodger is the closest we come to an interesting character, not least because he adopts a kind of mentor role to Paul. Orlando who heads the group simply isn't on the page long enough to make an impression and I didn't really care about what happened to him in the end.
Marks interchanges between Paul's experiences with Omega Place and the activities of Henry Garden (a Home Office civil servant who seems to be involved in leaking information to the group and who is being blackmailed by a sinister businessman), Dean Mayhew (a mercenary hunting Omega Place) and Jane Mercer (an MI5 officer charged with finding Omega Place and stopping their activities). For me, the inclusion of the adult characters was a mistake. I didn't feel emotionally connected to them or their problems and I didn't think that there was enough tension to what they were doing to make me worry about Paul's safety and whilst they were necessary from the point of view of helping to explain just what Omega Place was set up to do, I found the exposition explaining this to be a little blah.
Marks gives the book an open ending, doubtless to allow for a sequel. Unfortunately, on the basis of this effort, I have no interest in reading it.
The Verdict:
This should have been so much better than it was. Marks fails to create any sense of tension, suspense or action in this book and I really didn't care about Paul or what he was getting into. Very unimpressive.
