lollipopsbooks

Title:Face/Mask

Author: Gabriel Boutros

Publisher:CreateSpace
Published Date: December 5th 2014
Rating: 3 Stars

Synopsis: Montreal in the year 2039. Like most major cities, the air is poisonous. On the other side of the planet, the war on terror rages with no end in sight. A devastating attack on Canadian soil leads to the installation of a militaristic administration. Civil rights are curtailed and the justice system is rife with corruption. In the middle of this decaying world lives Allen Janus: husband, father, bureaucrat and backstabber. In a moment of petty vindictiveness he will betray the people who love him, setting the lives of everyone in his family on a tragic course.
Gabriel Boutros, author of The Guilty, brings you a story about how lies can entrap both the deceiver and the deceived.
For me at least, it is known that it's the characters who make it or break it.  The first 60% percent of the novel was hard to get into, because in all honestly I didn't like any of the characters. Not the prick Janus, the bastard Sevigny, the dutiful Terry, the saintly Joe(which was unrealistic). It's increasingly difficult to continue on with the story where the main character annoys you to no end so that you have to take a break from reading it.

Some of the main themes that the author explored were: corruption, greed, cheating, love, and guilt. I've also found a direct correlation between this book and his other one that I have read "The Guilty" because they both have written very unlikely male protagonists, except this time I wasn't even rooting for Janus even at the unexpected ending.

One of the positive things that I could find, is that it was interesting to see how history had been written in the future in this kind of dystopian way which was a path that I didn't expect the writer to take but it was established at the beginning of every chapter with the different laws that were stated. The title relates to the state of the environment in the setting, which is established early on, quite appreciated given the fact that I didn't have to keep on guessing what's going on; I knew what was happening in the game.

Overall, I can't say that I liked this book but I didn't hate it either, so after some long thinking I've decided to give this the neutral rating of 3 stars. Some more avid dystopian readers may find it more fascinating, but it didn't just do it for me.

*I have received an ebook version from "For Love of a Book" club in exchange for an honest review.*