The Registry by Shannon Stoker

First of all, major thumbs up for uniqueness. I've never read anything like this and I've read a lot of books. It's American in the future...I mean, seriously, imagine for a moment women continue this current downward spiral of yielding to men, of being submissives, and worrying about only their dang appearance...

The government has taken over. American is great, the rest of the world is wrong. Women are to be raised, appraised, and sold. Dumb, beautiful women are desired. Submissive women who do as their husbands desire. Boys are soldiers dedicated solely to protecting their country.

The gov't become The Registry. Humans are only told what the Registry wants them to know.

Mia has just been appraised and bought for 500,000 dollars, but having just seen her sister beaten and abused, finally begins to question the way they live. What is happening in other countries? Are women treated this way? Could she maybe escape and have a say in her life?

Her, her friend, and Andrew, a farmhand traveling being he enlists, end up on an adventure as they try to escape to Mexico, a cruel, evil billionaire hot on their trail, leaving bodies in the wake of his fancy helicopter.

What I enjoyed about this novel is the complete thought-evoking world the author created. I actually found myself nodding, imaging this could very well happen if we're not careful. And Andrew...I found his plight/situation the most fascinating of all. Boy are abandoned, thrown out. It's assumed that they will be better soldiers if they grow up without love, connections, if they are forced to fend for themselves. Andrew is like a trained robot who slowly begins to feel, but doesn't know what to do about his emotions. To add to the robot-feel of the men in the story, they often fail to speak in contractions. Their prose is very robotic.

The heroine...I have mixed feelings about her. She seems bratty and selfish a lot, but then she was raised to be this good-for-nothing wife who just looks good and cooks. Like any teenager, suddenly she has freedom--not only to get into trouble, but to FEEL and act on those feelings--and naturally this leads to swapping spit with two different boys as she experiments. I just didn't care for the love triangle aspect of it and the fact she was willing to behave like this when people are literally DYING so she can have her freedom.

Truly, a fascinating plot and conflict though. The book also has these bits of The Girls' and Boys' Guides to this futurist world that at times made me laugh out loud.

"...female physical desires will be satisfied with intense  pleasure on a wife's marriage night. Over the length of the marriage more pleasure will be afforded the wife, some so intense and glorious it would be unladylike to put them into words."

"There is no gray area when it comes to war. All others are wrong and we are always right."

Galley received from Edelweiss and quote may be slightly different in the published version. Three bikes.

Strong is Sexy Heroine of the Week: Aiyana Cassidy & Kendra

Book: Run Like Hell
Author: Adam Gaffen
Heroine: Aiyana Cassidy, Kendra

Her name was Aiyana Cassidy and she was thirty-two years old. Half Irish and half Native American, her name meant ‘Eternal Bloom‘, though everyone called her Cass. Tall, nearly two meters, and slim, she had long auburn hair that trailed down her back (when it wasn’t pinned up for work)... But it was her eyes that were her most memorable feature – pale, ice-blue eyes that seemed to gaze deep into the soul of anyone she talked to.

She’d grown up in a small town in northern Minnesota, part of the Northern Imperium. Her childhood was uneventful, she thought. Science fair winner in sixth grade for her design of a hypersonic transport, she’d always shown a flair for design and engineering. So it wasn’t a surprise when she announced, political differences be damned, she was going to attend MIT...

Seven years at MIT later, she left with her Master’s in Quantum Mechanics and a Doctorate in Optical Engineering. The Heavy Lift Corporation hired her immediately, to help design the next generation of Photonic Laser Thrusters (PLT), and she moved to New Mexico and the Los Alamos laboratories. There she was given her own research team and budget and allowed the freedom to work as she pleased... Her professional life flourished, but her personal life floundered for a time. Until, that is, she forced herself to take an entire night off.

Kendra had skipped college entirely, going directly to the San Fernando Valley and getting into the sensies. Shorter than Aiyana by several centimeters, she was blonde, carried true green eyes, and was fuller across the hips and bust, a legacy of her donor-mother. From her earliest years, she’d loved the old ‘television’ programs of the twentieth century. Now, after several years, she had made enough money, and invested wisely enough, to semi-retire. Rare was her on-screen performance, and rarer still a public appearance. She had purchased a large spread off the Jemez Mountain Trail, fifty klicks west of Los Alamos. The remote location was her attempt to ensure privacy, as much as was possible. When her studio wanted her to appear for a premiere, she insisted, and had the clout to ensure, that the event take place near her new home. That led to the encounter with Aiyana, and the renewal of their friendship.

So how do an optical engineer and a movie producer end up in a killer's crosshairs, and who's really behind it?  

That's what Run Like Hell is about!

Blurb:

 Wedding days are supposed to be memorable, but probably not like this. Not with an assassination attempt and fleeing your home and country for reasons you don't understand. But that's exactly what happens to Aiyana Cassidy. Now, she's on a quest to find out who's chasing her, what they want, and how she can stop them.

Set a century from now, this novella is the first of the Cassidy Chronicles.

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