Me on Glitch

Title: Glitch
Author: Heather Anastasiu
Release Date: August 7, 2012
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin (Macmillan imprint)

In the Community, there's no pain or war. Implanted computer chips have wiped humanity clean of destructive emotions and thoughts are replaced by the Link. When Zoe starts to malfunction, she starts having her own thoughts and feelings. No Link. She knows she has to report this, but the glitches gave her something else: telekinetic powers. As she struggles to stay under the radar of the Monitors and Regulators, she comes across other glitchers like Adrien and Max, two boys who make her feel different new emotions. Together, they have to find a way to break free of the Community before they're caught, or deactivated.

Dark and dangerous, Glitch is a glimpse into a future closed of from emotion and original thought, a future closed off from the outside world. The Community is in control, the Link tells you what to think, and if you appear anomalous you could be deactivated. This book felt unique, felt cold and harsh, and was full of suspense and surprises.

When a person feels no emotion, their inner monologue will sound different than it does when emotion is felt. At the beginning when Zoe is connected to the Link, her voice was concise, crisp, without any extra information. She sounded boring and without a soul, as she should. But when she was glitching, when she could feel, her true voice came out, that of a scared and confused girl trapped in a cage she can't stand to be inside anymore. There was a clear transition between the two. And her introduction to emotion was almost childlike, but that's because she knows nothing of them, nothing of hate or fear or happiness or sadness or love.

This book isn't science fiction in the traveling into space sense but more the computer chips implanted in the brain sense, and it's mixed with some paranormal elements and a controlling dystopian-style ruling body. People are tools for the Community, keeping things working as they should to continue the proper order of things. It felt a little like Elana Johnson's Possession and a little like Lauren Oliver's Delirium, but the characters and the setting were different enough that I didn't keep thinking of other books.

Living without emotion or individuality sounds impossible for someone who's felt it all their lives, but what if you never knew emotion? What if you were, essentially, a slave to a ruling body? Nothing would be wasted, everything would be in order, but at some point something would mess it all up.

(I received an e-galley to review from St. Martin's Griffin through NetGalley.)