In Billy Dering’s UTOPIA PROJECT – Everyone Must Die, a group of young friends, gathered on a chilly New Jersey beach, experience a blinding red flash. Kid Carlson makes his way to a convenience store several blocks away; when his vision returns the next morning, he finds the body of the clerk behind the counter. Everywhere he looks, he finds nothing but bodies—not only of people, but of birds, dogs, and deer. Kid’s girlfriend, Sara, the daughter of a general, recalls a day several years earlier when a scientist presented the US government with a laser neutron weapon that would destroy all life but leave structures unaffected. One of the many questions readers might have is how Sara knows about something that should have been a closely guarded government secret–is her father so indiscreet?
The small group of survivors soon realize there are three ships in the sea nearby, and soldiers from these ships come ashore and attempt to hunt them down. Four young women are captured and taken to the ships, where they find themselves about to be integrated into the new world society being planned—one in which the members are trained to be obedient and calm, to work at whatever job they are assigned, and to engage in orgy-like sexual activities as part of the plan to repopulate the planet. Three of the women are eventually rescued by two of the young men, and the group goes on the run to a hidden cabin in the woods, knowing that they are being hunted and could be found at any time.
While the premise of UTOPIA PROJECT is an interesting one, the book suffers from the lack of editing. One particular problem is dangling participles—phrases that modify a noun that isn’t expressed in the sentence. For example, in “Checking the screen, the caller was the United States secretary of defense,” the person checking the screen is not “the caller,” but the general holding the phone. In the beginning of this sentence, “Sitting in a beach chair under the pier, rows of stained and weathered pillars ran out to sea,” it is not the rows of pillars that are sitting in a beach chair, but rather Kid Carlson, a young man. There are also myriad comma problems, as in the phrase “what he referred to as the bloated, bureaucracy of government,” where the comma is incorrect—no comma is needed between a single adjective and the noun it modifies. There are bad hyphenation decisions at the end of some lines, as when “working” is broken as “wor-king” rather than the correct “work-ing” or “girlfriend” is broken as “girlf-riend” instead of “girl-friend.” Another distracting oddity is that the young characters refer to Sara’s father, the general, as “Mr. Hyland” rather than “General Hyland.” And, while it’s clear from the beginning that this is the first book in a series, the ending is abrupt, without any closure of elements in this volume.
The premise of UTOPIA PROJECT- Everyone Must Die is an interesting one, the characters are engaging, and the action moves forward fairly briskly, but careful readers will frequently regret the lack of editing, which does so much to distract from the story.
~Elizabeth Jewell for IndieReader