I just found this underwhelming and not for me. The premise was cool but the actual delivery was underwhelming and really needed work on it for it to hit the goal i thought it would. The characters were a bit weak for me and were a bit 2d overall.

I went into this book kind of expecting it to be like otherworld or Ready player one and I was very disappointed.

This book was not what I expected in the sense that it made me truly think. The events that happened are not a stretch to imagine happening in the world today. I was hoping for a little more chemistry between the characters.

When I picked this book I thought I would be reading a dystopia similar to Divergent and some other dystopias. Even though it started that way, it became much more and much better than this, very quickly.

In a world where people live in Plexes, huge complexes housing most of the population, going out is no longer necessary. Students learn through screens and adults work within the Plex. Jennifer is a perfect student, with top grades. Her goal is to get in the best universities and land a good job after graduating. Her girlfriend Melody is the opposite. She’s a free spirit, who enjoys the outdated things that are books and poetry. When Melody meets Charles Winston, a former teacher who remembers how life used to be before the automatisation of the world, she brings Jennifer and a couple friends along for a spiritual journey that will stick with them forever.

As I said, I expected this books being about freeing oneself from the grasp of the screens, while the characters would be leading some grand revolution in the country. I was dead wrong. This is much more than this. This is about freeing your spirit, doing what you love and learning to share it with people you care about. The characters are leading a silent revolution to gain slivers of knowledge, through various processes, together, while the society always taught them they did not need anyone besides virtuals teachers. All in all, this is a very poetic story, which brought some peace and kindness to my heart. I’m simply a little confused about a storyline happening in the middle of the book which was kind of pointless to me, but other than that, I enjoyed the plot !

As for the characters, I mostly loved them, besides the main one… Jennifer is the one that evolves the most throughout the books, but I couldn’t connect with her. However, I loved Jean Paul and Melody, who both moved me; Jean Paul with his desire to fit in, and Melody who wanted nothing more than to get out. Winston, the teacher was a great character, and I loved the ending Adam Knight gave him, even though he was a bit stereotyped and biased regarding the way education should be. Even Peter, last member of this little club pulled one of my heart strings.

Every one of those character has something special, a soul. The writing style for this book was surprisingly good, if sometimes dragging on, and I would definitely recommend it for dystopia and poetry/litterary books fans.

Thank you to NineStar Press and Netgalley for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review !

3.5 Stars. This was a hard one to rate. It was about 3 stars for my personal level of enjoyment but I’m giving the book and extra half star because it was well written. I picked this book up hoping for either sci-fi or something similar to The Hunger Games. Not the actual games part but the whole rebelling against an oppressive government part. I guess this book was a little bit about that, but not really in the way I was hoping for. Instead this book is very cerebral. And because of that the pace could really slow at times.

This is a story about what could happen if corporations took control over education. How you could get a person to learn only what you decide is best for them, thus keeping the population controlled, and the people in power in power. Considering who our Secretary of Education is, and the fact she would love to defund the public school system, this book was a little scarier than it should have been.

Since I mostly read lesfic I do want to mention I don’t consider this lesfic. This is more a book with LGBTQ characters. There is a slight wlw relationship but this book is not a romance.

If you want to read something really cerebral that will make you think, this might be for you. It wasn’t really my personal taste, but I do think the author wrote a well written book.

The best book is one that gets you thinking. One where a bad guy is not a bad guy, but someone who behaves in a way that is not always good for the protagonist. And who is the antagonist really, and who is the good guy?

Is it Charles, who plants dangerous ideas in the minds of young students, believing he will help them think freely? Does he really free them, or does he only add danger to their lives? Is it miss Barfield, who infiltrates and moulds the minds of young people? Is greed really all there is to her motives?

Reading this book, I realised my need to read more and differently. It has been too long since I read a book and thought about things like motives, deeper meanings, etc. I want to read more, more literature, more poetry. 'At the Trough' has rekindled my flame, and I want to thank Adam Knight for it.