Giveaway & review: Win a free copy of Swipe by Evan Angler @ThomasNelson @booksneeze

Read on for my review of the first book in a promising new series from Evan Angler. After my review is a great guest post from the author.

Don't forget to enter my giveaway at the end of this post, to win your own FREE copy of this book to be mailed right to your home!

MY REVIEW

Fear has stalked Logan Langley for years, ever since his sister went to get The Mark when she turned 13 and never came back. The Mark is placed on everyone's wrist on their 13th birthday, celebrated as the pathway to freedom as it lets you buy things, get a job, live your life. But no one believes Logan when he insists he's being followed or is seeing faces in windows or that doors open and close on their own. As his own 13th birthday draws near and he anticipates getting the Mark, Logan's fears turn into reality as he discovers that he truly is being followed by those who call themselves the Dust. With the help of a newly-made friend name Erin, whose father is a high-level government agent, Logan attempts to find out who is after him, and comes face-to-face with the truth about the Mark.

Swipe is a fast-paced, gripping thriller that teens will simply devour. Despite the fact that I am way over the age range of the target audience, I highly enjoyed this book and the "what-ifs" that the author has created. What if you couldn't buy anything or own anything unless you had the Mark? What if a world war had decimated known society and changed the landscape of civilization? What if everything the government has told you may be a lie? Evan Angler has created highly-believable characters, ones you will be rooting for as they race around trying to figure out what is going on. Logan especially is a character many will identify with, someone still trying to figure out who he is and what his place in life is. And yet it's clear that he has courage and a desire for justice, traits to admire. Angler uses superb pacing to unveil the plot, chapter by chapter, leaving you racing for the end...and wishing that book 2 in the series was already available!

Swipe is a thrilling adventure, with a futuristic setting that seems eerily possible today. It is a tale of friendship, of loyalty, a battle of right versus wrong of the best kind, and it is an excellent beginning to what is sure to be a well-loved series. I highly recomend this book and give it 5 out of 5 stars.

Book has been provided courtesy of the publisher, Thomas Nelson, for the purposes of this unbiased review.

And now for a guest post from Evan...

Why Differ?

by Evan Angler

We live in a world where things can be easy. Tablet computers that fit in our pockets and make calls for us and tell us where we are. Globalized digital networks that connect us effortlessly, all the time. Modern medicine that works wonders. News that arrives the moment it happens. Food that stays fresh forever. 

This isn’t science fiction. This is reality. And in the American Union, all you need—for any of it—is the Mark.

So what’s wrong with that? The Pledge unifies us, does it not? Just as its Mark protects us? No one could argue that it hasn’t brought us together, that it hasn’t created peace . . . that our allegiance to the Chancellor hasn’t bound us and given common ground from which all our ideas and ideologies may grow. Together. Compatibly. 

After the years of slaughter, after the decades of political and environmental devastation that forced more and more of us to fight over less and less land, water, food . . . was this unity not a welcome change for all of us?

It isn’t even compulsory. No one has to Pledge. But who wouldn’t? In the years since its implementation, the Mark has rightfully become the capstone of a childhood well spent, the crowning achievement in a young man’s or woman’s life, the opened door to citizenship, adulthood, independence . . . 

Every schoolchild knows that in the wake of the Total War, this Mark has become the very symbol of our commitment to patriotism and peace. It is the constant reminder of our loftiest intentions. 

To be Markless is to reject these ideals. To be Markless is to be different.

So why would anyone choose to be different? In a world of absolutes, of black and white, of right and wrong, why would anyone choose “wrong”? 

My name is Evan Angler. I may have answers to these questions. But I can’t risk writing them. Not here. Not on the Internet, for anyone to see.

And you wouldn’t risk reading them.

But if you are determined . . . if you are determined to learn the truth, no matter the cost, then what I can tell you is this: I’ve put what I know onto paper. Old-fashioned, obsolete—paper. Where it can’t be copied and pasted with the stroke of a stylus, where it can’t be sent around the world at the press of a button, where it can’t be recorded and stored forever in a million irretrievable pieces across cyberspace and time for any watchful eye to see. Paper is intimate. It is between you and me. It is fragile. It can be destroyed. 

And when you find it, if you find it . . . once you’ve read it . . . I do encourage you to destroy it.

Swipe is the first volume in the chronicles of Logan Langly, Erin Arbitor, and the Dust. Their account is dangerous; the information within it is forbidden. 

I wrote their story for everyone. But if you are not yet thirteen, if you have not yet Pledged to the Chancellor in exchange for his Mark of citizenship, if you have not yet made that choice to conform to given definitions of what may be easy and what may be “right” . . . then I have written this story especially for you. 

For I’m not ashamed to tell you that I’m still afraid of the dark. And if you too have ever turned out the light only to feel that tinge of panic, that inkling that someone, somewhere, might possibly be watching . . . I’m here to tell you that they are.

At its heart, Swipe is a book about friendship against the odds. It’s a book about a group of boys and girls who stick together to stand up for one another and for what they believe in. 

But why would they choose to be different? Why would they choose “wrong”?

Are you ready to learn the truth?

GIVEAWAY



Courtesy of Thomas Nelson, I'm hosting a give-away for 1 copy of "Swipe" to readers from the U.S. and Canada! To enter do the following:

1. Become a follower of my blog (through Google Followers or Networked Blogs) then leave a comment confirming you became a follower. If you are already a follower, move on to step 2.

2. Leave a comment answering this question: "Do you ever think books will ever completely disappear, and everything become accessible only digitally, as portrayed in Swipe?"

++  Please include your email address so I can contact you to arrange to get the book in the mail to you.

That's all there is to it. Contest Ends May 12, 2012. Good luck!

Jeremy