A Dream Within A Dream: The Dark Intercept Blog Tour: Review, Excerpt + Giveaway

http://www.jeanbooknerd.com/2017/08/the-dark-intercept-by-julia-keller.html

The Dark Intercept (The Dark Intercept #1)
Author: Julia Keller
Release Date: October 31, 2017
Publisher: Tor Teen

Description:

The State controls your emotions. What would you pay to feel free?

In a radiant world of endless summer, the Intercept keeps the peace. Violet Crowley, the sixteen-year-old daughter of New Earth’s Founding Father, has spent her life in comfort and safety. Her days are easy thanks to the Intercept, a crime-prevention device that monitors and provokes emotion. But when her long-time crush, Danny Mayhew, gets into a dangerous altercation on Old Earth, Violet launches a secret investigation to find out what he's hiding. An investigation that will lead her to question everything she's ever known about Danny, her father, and the power of the Intercept.

Praise for THE DARK INTERCEPT:

“The Dark Intercept grabbed me from the first page and shook me until the last. A riveting and suspenseful story of love, risk, and betrayal.” —EMMY LAYBOURNE, author of Berserker, Sweet, and the Monument 14 trilogy

“A chilling and thought-provoking look at the power of weaponized emotion.” —MELISSA LANDERS, author of the Alienated trilogy and Starflight

“Both cautionary and hopeful—a rare, literary feat.” —GENNIFER ALBIN, New York Times bestselling author of the Crewel World trilogy

“A stormy, spine-tingling ride in which everything remembered and once felt in your life can be used against you.” —BLUE BALLIETT, author of Chasing Vermeer and The Calder Game

“The Dark Intercept goes straight to the heart of why privacy matters in today's world. Keller has written an accessible coming-of-age adventure where the teenage protagonist comes to understand the consequences of living in a society that monitors everyone's emotions, including her own.” —MICHAEL C. ROBINSON, Chair of the American Library Association Intellectual Freedom Committee's Privacy Subcommittee

“Julia Keller writes so viscerally that she takes the readers with her into the worlds she has created. The Intercept is a fascinating springboard which she uses to explore the importance of feelings, and how they affect our lives and choices.” —BETSY FRASER, Selector, Calgary Public Library (Alberta, Canada), and 2016 YALSA/ABC-CLIO/Greenwood Service to Young Adults Achievement Award-winner

You can purchase The Dark Intercept at the following Retailers:

She watched.

It was her job to watch, but Violet would have watched anyway. She leaned over her keyboard, slinging her body so far forward that her nose almost bumped the screen. Her heart was jumping around in her chest. She could feel the sweat pooling in her palms.

The short, dirty person zipping across the picture on her monitor was named Tommy Tolliver. His nickname was Tin Man.

Violet knew those things because the data showed up in a small square box next to his face on the screen. The information only stayed for a flicker of an instant before it was updated, but that was long enough. In livid orange letters, the box told her that he was sixteen years old and really, really scared.

So scared that he was running as fast as he could through the twisted filigree of streets on Old Earth. So scared that his pulse rate was leaping up and up, and his thoughts were a crazy gray tangle.

The cop who was chasing him was named Danny Mayhew. Violet didn’t need a box next to his face to tell her that. Which was a good thing, because there wasn’t one. The Intercept didn’t track cops. It only kicked in for the bad guys. Not the good guys.

Tin Man was fast. But Danny was also fast. In fact, Danny was a tick faster. Which meant he was catching up.

Violet sucked in a deep breath. She didn’t let it out again right away. She was too focused on the action in that strange and distant place to remember to breathe. When she did remember, the breath came out as a frustrated sigh. She used her thumb to flick impatiently at a triangular slice of dark blond hair that had drifted onto her forehead.

Oh, Danny, she thought. Not again. What are you doing down there, anyway?

Tin Man swerved into a filthy alley. It was always raining on Old Earth. Or at least it seemed to be on those not-very-frequent occasions when Violet was required to look down there. The rain draped the place in a greasy sheen, slickening the bricks.

Tin Man’s luck suddenly left him.

Copyright © 2017 by Julia Keller

The Dark Intercept is a bold and imaginative first book in an exciting YA science fiction series that fans are definitely going to love. The plot of the story was very in depth and original, which is hard to come by anymore. I really liked learning about this future the author created and about both the New Earth and the Old Earth. And then there's the whole Intercept topic, which is a huge part of the story. I loved learning about the Intercept - how it came to be, what it does, what it's supposed to do, and what it can be capable of, among others. It really made me sit back and think about what life would be like if something like this was in our world today. It's a fascinating and horrifying thought and one that can be argued for both the positive and the negative. I'm looking forward to learning more about the Intercept and the world the author has created for the series.

The characters were pretty well rounded with distinctive traits and flaws, which made them realistic. I had a personal issue with the writing style, however. I strongly prefer the first person point of view, and this book is told from the third person. I never seem to connect with the characters as deeply (or barely at all) when the writing isn't done in the first person. It's my own quirk and has nothing to do with the author's writing or the book itself. Just my personal preference. But it always has a pretty big impact on my reading experience, and this was no exception. The plot was full of action, suspense, and tons of questions. Eventually, the answers are given to us - so there really weren't any big cliffhangers (which I'm grateful for). I thought the main plot of Danny and Violet along with their secrets was interesting and I liked watching them work through everything together while watching their relationship grow and change. Overall, I think this was a fantastic start to a promising new series that fans of science fiction and dystopias are going to want to pick up.

Julia Keller, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and former cultural critic at the Chicago Tribune, is the author of many books for adults and young readers, including A Killing in the Hills, the first book in the Bell Elkins series and winner of the Barry Award for Best First Novel (2013); Back Home; and The Dark Intercept. Keller has a Ph.D. in English literature from Ohio State and was awarded Harvard University’s Nieman Fellowship. She was born in West Virginia and lives in Ohio.