In Sleep State Interrupt, a giant media corporation has taken over the Internet, created an addictive virtual reality called BetterWorld, and controls nearly all information. Politicians do their bidding and a brainwashed humanity serves a privileged few. Waylee Freid, an unemployed Baltimore journalist with ever-worsening bipolar disorder, is the only hope for a brighter future. She and her countercultural friends bust a notorious teenage hacker out of jail and sneak into a closed presidential fundraiser at the Smithsonian castle, where they hope to record incriminating admissions that will wake up the world. Hunted by Homeland Security, Waylee and her friends must reach a sufficient audience by broadcasting their video during the Super Bowl. But to do so, they’ll have to break into one of the most secure facilities ever built. – Goodreads
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Sleep State Interrupt Review
In Sleep State Interrupt, the world is nearing the total takeover from a global media corporation. Most of the population seems completely unaware of the injustice that’s being perpetrated. A hacktivist group desperate to topple the corporation sets some pie-in-the-sky goals. They’re poor but connected to the counter-cultural underground. They”ll do everything they can, even if their mission seems impossible.
The truth is that a lot of this book seems disturbingly possible. It really does. If you control what people hear, if you can put the spin on everything, then you can control the people. Roughly sixty people right now are as wealthy as half the world’s population put together. Even in the current presidential race, we can see that racist, bigoted toerags with more money than soul can make dangerous plays for power. That there are enough people in the American population that are either complete imbeciles or as racist and bigoted as one of our current candidates is to actually make the chance of someone like that person becoming president. Even some of the insider conversations are completely believable. So yes, anyone could easily believe the premise of this book.
Sleep State Interrupt just wasn’t for me. This is not a badly written book, but by the time I hit the 2/3rds point, I was having to force myself to push on. Lots happened, without a doubt, and the pace – realistically – was fairly quick and even. However, it was one that read extremely slow. This is, probably, in part due to the fact that it’s hard for me to get into books with a political premise. I chose to read the book because it sounded like a Mission Impossible gig. I’m obviously meant to watch these type of plots on TV, not read about them.
T.C. Weber mostly did a good job in Sleep State Interrupt. He laid things out clearly (sometimes too clearly), made sure the book was always moving forward, and gave us a believable world. There are very few things that I can fault the author for. However, I simply couldn’t find a connection with the characters, and I couldn’t invest myself in the action. So, a no-go from me, but I won’t warn people away from it.
Sleep State Interrupt is available on Amazon.
Title: Sleep State Interrupt | Author: T.C. Weber | Publisher: See Sharp Press | Pub. Date: 2016-9-1 | Pages: 318 | ISBN13: 9781937276973 | Genre: Science Fiction & Thriller | Language: English | Triggers: None | Rating: 3 out of 5 | Date Read: 2016-10-3 | Source: Received a copy from the publisher for review consideration.