Johnny Cassidy’s Young Adult novel, THE CONSEQUENCES OF VICTORIA GREY (The Amulet Exposure) has the feel of a post-pandemic novel. In the 2030s, a cataclysmic event called SunFall has rocked the world. A mysterious illness called crax – variously described as “scars of repression”, and a “controversial affliction”, one that often causes others to look down on the sufferer – stalks the population in a near future that is heading in the direction of dystopia. The Lotus social media platform is the work of the Lotus Temple, a group of shadowy quasi-religious figures who seek to restore normalcy after SunFall. But the novel’s allegorical chops are neither as incisive nor as compelling as they aspire to be.
Victoria Grey, who is under the tutelage of the Lotus Temple, is in possession of magic amulets, devices that confer on the wearer a variety of superhuman powers. In this world, logic is glossed as good, and effusions of emotion as evil; therefore, people have become accustomed to not expressing their emotions – hence, one presumes, the “visor mandate” that requires everyone to wear a visor in public. (Based on the illustrations, which show a Geordi LaForge-esque prosthesis, it can be assumed that these were meant to be used as a shield designed to obscure the eyes – a conduit for emotional expression – from others, in addition to their use as smart glasses, but their purpose was not made clear, and it’s hard to be sure.) Victoria rails against this orthodoxy. The climax of the novel’s first quarter – a speech she gives in which she defies the Lotus Temple, admits to the use of amulets, and emotes – results in her demonization by the stony-faced crowd. “You think feeling is evil?” shouts a lone supporter in the crowd. “This is strength. She has STRENGTH!”
In the light of compulsory lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and face masks, what are we to conclude from this? The binary thinking that pervades the novel is nothing if not reflective of the entrenched views on the opposite sides of the political spectrum in the United States in particular. If it were explicated more carefully, it might form the kernel of a good story. However, a major problem with the book is that it contains so many loose ends that speak to ideas not fully formed. The Grey Pages is some sort of chronicle or similar from which we hear excerpts at regular intervals, but its provenance and importance are never revealed; at one point, there is a passing reference to “the war”, but the conflict is never mentioned again; and worst of all, for all of their centrality to the world-building, readers never get the slightest indication of how SunFall actually manifested or precisely what it was, why the prophecy that begins the novel carries so much sway, what the phrases “organic hero” and “organic superhero”, which are bandied about fairly regularly, actually mean, or how amulets, which were discovered in the medieval era, came to be. Even the purpose of the visors that everybody wears is left to be inferred. The lack of concern for ensuring that the reader is acclimated to the non-intuitive mechanics of this world is peculiar, and hinders enjoyment. Without more explanation of these elements, the story comes across as inscrutable. There are many interesting ideas here to do with the moral use of power, the nature of orthodoxy, and the malleability of public opinion in the age of social media, and with a little more care and some more careful characterization, a good, exciting story might result.
The novel is also littered with typographical errors. There are missing periods, or commas where periods should be; quotation marks that are opened, but not closed, or found in the middle of an utterance for no reason; “its” is rendered as “it’s” on multiple occasions; and there are dozens of instances of missing words and petty spelling mistakes.
Johnny Cassidy’s THE CONSEQUENCES OF VICTORIA GREY (The Amulet Exposure) toys with interesting ideas, but the story is too vaguely executed and arcane to be compelling.
~Craig Jones for IndieReader