Book Review: Reality Testing by Grant Price (Sundown Book 1)

     Mara Kenzing decided to join the LINK program in order to gain some extra carbon so she and her partner would not be so hard pressed. Jema warned her against it and it seems the feisty reporter was correct, as Mara has woken up ahead of schedule in a body that is not her own and a corpse in front of her. Now, Mara must escape Berlin and try to find out not only what happened to her but what the future may hold. What makes it worse is there is another consciousness in her mind as well, the Other. Can she carve her way with the group on the outside of the city or will the true purpose of the Other come to fruition? 

    A woman in a "progressed" world tries her best to save herself from her new reality. While trying to escape the lower class she finds herself out of the caste all together and with less than she ever had to begin with. She has lost her home, her partner, and even her body. Now, she must leave the only home she has ever known in order to track down a band of people that may not even exist in order to have some hope of survival. 

    I was approached to read and review this book as part of the Blackthorn Book Tours and I agreed readily. All in all I liked the book that being said unless you have a very broad vocabulary over multiple languages be prepared to translate a lot. Some of it you can get by context, some of it Google translate had no idea and I am still lost on. Also, numbers are a lie. 15 is ten-five. I don't know why that irks me so much, but it really really does. Alright, now that I have ranted about the things that drove me absolutely nuts during this book for the goods. 

    Mara was in the body of a savant, which is an orphan that passed a certain test and is trained in certain areas of expertise with everything else essentially removed. There actually is a Savant syndrome where someone is highly specialized in a few areas while lacking in all other areas. Something I did not know before beginning this book. She loses everything and still she presses on. Many would have just given in to the bulls after any of the things she encountered before leaving Berlin, but at each obstacle she buttoned down and was able to make it through. Yes, she had the guiding hand of the Other and once outside the city she had the Vanguard, but there were things that she had to do for herself. Things that if she had done nothing would not have been possible. For that I give her Kudos. 

    There are a lot of same sex relationships in this book, money is not a thing, them/theys seem more commonplace than he/shes, men can have babies, food is not even real food, rain is the result of engineers, and life does not exist outside of cities. I don't really know if the world is one giant Pangea kind of thing or if this book is just centralized in Asia. America was mentioned once stating that they fully embraced the Seahorse program (how men were able to have babies), but that is the only instance that I can recall. Theses are things that are just facts from the book and do not mean them all in a bad light. Except the food one. I like food. 

    Honestly, this is a fast paced, survival of the fittest type book where we have to choose between "progress" or reverting to how things once were done. How things are mostly done now. Planting crops and not relying on physical augmentations to survive. Personally give me blue clouds and plants any day over engineered rain. 

    If you don't mind all of the translations or the annoying number thing this book is a great read and one that I hope you take the time to enjoy as well. When I initially posted this review on 5/22/21 this book was free for purchase. It is now, confusingly enough, on preorder with a set release date of 1/27/22. It is possible that they are making edits, but I have no idea. If you would like to pre-order this book it will be $6.99 on Amazon by clicking here.

This book is available on Kindle Unlimited.