Domers

by David Couzins

[littleread1]

From Goodreads: 2080 A.D., the United States is a “virtual” country where citizens live sealed inside millions of family-sized domes to protect themselves from the terrors of the Outside. A betrothed couple is kidnapped while moving to their new dome home and for the first time experiences Nature and Freedom while getting caught up in a multi-tribe American Indian army’s war with Mexico.

But that doesn’t really tell you what the book is about. You start off meeting nine year old Jonny Corant working on a school project. Which leads you to meeting the rest of the Corant family living inside the dome. Everyone, except grandpa, who had lived on The Outside for a while, seems happy with their setup. You know what they say, ignorance is bliss. Through the first several chapters you come to realize no one leaves their dome, unless they are getting married and moving into their own dome. Everyone works, sleeps, and plays through the Net, a highly regulated and monitored internet. Their little bubble is shattered when Tom & Jenny’s (his fiance) transport to their own dome gets attacked by a small Mexican force and they are kidnapped. They get rescued by a Native American scout working for the U.S. military. And that is where I began to get really lost.

Don’t get me wrong, I love a good dystopia like the next person. And this one was good. When characters have names that are foreign to me, I tend to have a hard time keeping them straight. It isn’t anything against a specific culture, just me. Maybe I need to start writing them down. A few key characters I got down after a few chapters, Sun Rain, Roving Wolf (even though I did get him mixed up every once in a while) and a few others.

A good portion of the book is spent talking about military strategies. I appreciate how much detail was gone into, and about specific locations, but it could have all been in Greek and I wouldn’t have known the difference. I don’t want to have to pull out a map to get the full enjoyment of a book I am reading.

I wish the author had spent more time exploring Tom and Jenny’s feelings about The Outside. When he described their first sunrise; man I could see it. It made me (almost, I am not a morning person!) get up to watch the next sunrise. I started to think about all the things we take for granted, and what it would be like seeing them for the first time. Waking up to birds chirping, which now can be irritating if you are trying to sleep in, could be wonderful and amazing. Thunderstorms, which I used to love, now are a nuisance, would be terrifying.

And then how the war ended seemed anti-climactic. I won’t go into it here, because I don’t want to tell you who wins, but one side was losing, almost lost, then the other side surrendered, because of low troop morale? I mean, I get it, but there could have been more too it. Or more foreshadowing. Or something, I am not sure what.

Overall this was a good book. I am glad I read it, but it isn’t one I would read again. It gets a solid 3 1/2 stars. The problems I had with it were mostly my own, and not because of a bad story on the authors part. I am glad I read it, and it is one of those books that make you think, “What would it take for me to move my family into a dome?”

For me, the answer is, I wouldn’t