Review: ‘Jaffle Inc’ by Heide Goody and Iain Grant

Blurb

Alice works for Jaffle Tech incorporated, the world’s biggest technology company and the creator of the Jaffle Port, the brain implant that gives users direct access to global communications, social networks and every knowledge source on the planet.

Alice is on Jaffle Standard, the free service offered to all people. All she has to do in return is let Jaffle use a bit of her brain’s processing power. Maybe it’s being used to control satellites. Maybe it’s being used to further space exploration. Maybe it’s helping control self-driving cars on the freeway. Her brain is helping Jaffle help the world. And Jaffle are only using the bits of her brain she doesn’t need…

But when a kind deed goes wrong, Alice gains unauthorised access to her entire brain and discovers what she has been missing out on her entire life: music, art, laughter, love…

Now that she has discovered what her mind is truly capable of, how long will the company bosses let her keep it?

My Review

Thanks to Anne, of Random Things Tours, for organising this tour and not minding that I always ask for physical copies (brain weasels!), and to the authors for sending me a copy of this book.

I had a week to read this book, plus five others to fit in before the end of the month. Not all of them had arrived. I had an exhausting day and a quick nap turned into several hours. I finally got up again sometime around 8 pm and had tea so I could take my meds. I needed something light to read so I picked up this book, thinking I’d read for a couple of hours and go back to bed. Just after midnight I’d finished it. Less than four hours. I didn’t move except to drink my squash and turn the page.

It was just what I needed.

The subject matter is actually quite serious – how much do we let technology into our lives and do we trust the companies who own the technology – but the writing was light and amusing. Alice’s exploration of the world, with Patrick’s guidance after she achieves freedom is funny and heartbreaking. I loved the development of the relationship between them, and the changes in their lives. The description of the world around them and the reflection writ large of attitudes common today but mostly not addressed.

This book is an amusing page-turner with an important message, written with a lightness so that the central idea isn’t overwhelming.