One of those friends-perhaps the most valued member of the team-Pod has a visual impairment. They are willing to die for life, evolution, dreams, and love.

Sixteen-year-old Luka Kane and a number of his friends rebel against this technology. In fact, with their perfect features and bodies, “all of them with their enhancements, mechanical lungs, robotic hearts, and synthetic blood,” (154) the Alts remind me somewhat of the Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld. Just as Huxley refers to various castes of people, Oliver introduces Smilers, Clones, Alts, and Regulars. For example Luka knows where the Missing are but refuses to tell, even when Happy tries to scare the location out of him with an apparition of his mother. In order to maintain control, Happy uses technology, tricks, and tactics like fear, coercion, bargaining, and confusion to manipulate people in getting them to turn on one another. Happy thinks of humankind as a virus, so it is “repairing the broken species, destroying a diseased batch and starting anew” (288). He decides who should be brainwashed into being the kind of person the world needs-placid, docile, compliant, and living in blissful ignorance in a virtual world called Purgatory. Galen Rye is in charge, and he decides who suffers as a battery-without hopes, dreams, and ambitions as they power the world with their energy harvested from pain, fear, and anger. In this new dystopian world, everybody’s happy because Happy-an artificial intelligence-rules the world. Along with the characters, they will wonder what is real and what is simulated. In Oliver’s second book in The Loop Trilogy targeted for young adults, readers will experience a video game vibe, like that achieved in The Matrix. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley gets a major update with The Block by Ben Oliver.

The block by ben oliver