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A review by energyrae
Knight in Paper Armor by Nicholas Conley
4.0
I’m going to skip my usual summary of this book as I feel the blurb is more than accurate and summarizes Knight in Paper Armor much better than I could. The combination of issues happening in the book is a good cross between the horrors of the past, with a Sci-Fi and dystopian twist, bundled into what could fall into the YA category. There’s good social commentary in here as well.
“Because if the little people all hate each other or are scared, the bad guys can pretend they’re the only ones able to fix things by pretending the problems were caused by the people who were different.”
Heaven’s Hole is anything but, and the tight ship that is Thorne Corporation is utterly scary. The human rights violations and abuse were horrific, and sadly, occur all over the world, even today. I would like to think that the world wouldn’t slip so far back from the progress we’ve made since Nazi Germany, but the further in history you move from an event, the more people forget.
There were a few things that kept me from giving this 5 stars. I feel that in the face of video evidence, the government wouldn’t just take someone’s word for it. We have technology that can show us when images and videos have been doctored. So the fact that Thorne was able to get away with so much wasn’t totally believable to me. I felt the end was a bit too easy and that it summed up too quickly considering how much extensive groundwork was put into the story.
When I look past those few things, there’s a lot to like with this one. The characters in this were well-written, and I liked how Billy and Natalia balanced each other out. I loved learning each of Billy’s new abilities as they were highly creative. When Conley described Natalia’s artwork, it came to life for me. The descriptions were incredibly rich, and that level of detail extended to the entire book. Overall, a fun read from start to finish.
“Because if the little people all hate each other or are scared, the bad guys can pretend they’re the only ones able to fix things by pretending the problems were caused by the people who were different.”
Heaven’s Hole is anything but, and the tight ship that is Thorne Corporation is utterly scary. The human rights violations and abuse were horrific, and sadly, occur all over the world, even today. I would like to think that the world wouldn’t slip so far back from the progress we’ve made since Nazi Germany, but the further in history you move from an event, the more people forget.
There were a few things that kept me from giving this 5 stars. I feel that in the face of video evidence, the government wouldn’t just take someone’s word for it. We have technology that can show us when images and videos have been doctored. So the fact that Thorne was able to get away with so much wasn’t totally believable to me. I felt the end was a bit too easy and that it summed up too quickly considering how much extensive groundwork was put into the story.
When I look past those few things, there’s a lot to like with this one. The characters in this were well-written, and I liked how Billy and Natalia balanced each other out. I loved learning each of Billy’s new abilities as they were highly creative. When Conley described Natalia’s artwork, it came to life for me. The descriptions were incredibly rich, and that level of detail extended to the entire book. Overall, a fun read from start to finish.