
On Friday my brother, my dad and I flew up to Darwin for the Northern Territory Taekwondo Championships (Which I will talk about another day) and I had heaps of time to read so I picked up a book I grabbed at the library on Thursday. The book, named iBoy, was written by Kevin Brooks about a sixteen year old boy who was given some cyber powers after an iPhone hit him in the head. There were moments where I found this book fun and laughed at its humor, but near the end when he was heading towards dealing with the big boss the language got really heavy and was used a lot.
Although, from the start, there were things that I felt a bit humphy about, such as how his girlfriend was raped (the book didn’t go into any details at all, just that said she got raped). I kinda got over this because that’s what happens in this world, and they showed how it affected his girlfriend. She was scared to be outside, and she didn’t come outside her house for nearly the whole book.
Anyway, the boy, whose name was Tom Harvey, was hit by an iPhone in the head, cracked his head open wide and he was sent to the hospital. The hospital was unable to get rid of all of the iPhone bits out of Tom’s brain. He discovered that the bits fused to his brain and his brain evolved, giving him access to the Internet, take photos or videos, hack into any database or phone without physical contact, and make large electricity shocks and also could create an electrical force field around his body. When he found out about his friend getting raped, he secretly heads out to find the people who did it and find the big man, nicked name the Devil.
I found this book, as a Christian, kinda disturbing. With all of the swearing and the constant mentioning of rape and the life in the bad neighborhood, I felt disturbed. I didn’t put the book down because I wanted to get an idea of other writers and at the time I picked the book up off the shelf at the library it seemed interesting. The reasons I don’t recommend it for other readers are:
A. Constant bad language.
B. I didn’t really feel refreshed after I finished reading it.
C. The few mentions of rape and sex (This should be A. but I put it down for third because it wasn’t used a lot-a lot, yet used enough to get near the top.)
D. There were a few things I disagreed with, (he wrote some sayings famous people had said at the beginning of each chapter, which I didn’t really agree with so I just skipped them.)
There are some things I enjoyed in this book, such as:
A. The special humor.
B. The Story Idea (it has a great story idea.)
The thing I picked up from other writers were that description is very handy. I already knew that but I never read such great description before, as he explained what was happening in Tom’s head with i-powers and how Kevin describe such a complex story idea.
So, there are some good and bad things about this book, and it was hard for me to write such a post on such a book. There are things I don’t like and there things I enjoyed about it. It’s hard! But, in my heart, I think that it’s not the greatest book to read, there are better books to read than iBoy.