Barnaby Hazen's Reviews > The Other Side

I am very impressed with this book on many levels. I can also say I found it sometimes hard to follow, but the main thing is I *wanted* to follow it all the way through—the confusion I sometimes experienced did not lose me in the greater sense of the word, as a reader. I always felt welcomed and seduced by the newest details, sometimes replacing and sometimes gratifying the previous complications with an explanation.

Her characters’ battle for something like privacy or freedom-in a world where one must delete one’s own passing thoughts to be safe from persecution-is ultimately distressing and I think relevant to current human technology by way of logical extension. Some of the tools in this fight include a built in computerized psyche (with which one converses and negotiates as one might a friend), practicing deception against one’s own allies (in order to throw the enemy off the bigger trail of the rebellion), pulling one’s punches against rapists so that one isn’t flagged for packing a punch too powerful to fit with one’s public profile. What's great about this last example to me is the razor's edge a woman must walk in protecting herself from on one hand unthinkable abuse, and on the other, politics and the law. Modern feminist issues contain haunting hints of the same difficult choices.

Here I have to mention William Gibson in passing, but Armas takes the most disturbing implications of cyber manipulation and entertainment to a hyper-steroidal new plateau-where millions of people may be engaged in one’s sexual fantasies and/or demoralizations. Those in high places are brought up to believe violent sex films victimizing a woman must be favorable to the woman-because of the publicity. Again, resonant to modern sex-work.

I offer a five-star review with the suggestion that the author could stand for a copy-editor—or a new one; I did find many little typos along the way. Armas' prose is too eloquent to taint with little syntax issues a second reader could easily be rid of for her. In any case, I am grateful to have found this book among so very many indies on the market.