THE FEED by Nick Clark Windo is a startling and timely debut which presents a world as unique and vividly imagined as STATION ELEVEN and THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS.

Tom and Kate’s daughter turns six tomorrow, and they have to tell her about sleep.
If you sleep unwatched, you could be Taken. If you are Taken, then watching won’t save you.
Nothing saves you.

Your knowledge. Your memories. Your dreams.
If all you are is on the Feed, what will you become when the Feed goes down?

For Tom and Kate, in the six years since the world collapsed, every day has been a fight for survival. And when their daughter, Bea, goes missing, they will question whether they can even trust each other anymore.

The threat is closer than they realise…

This was a book of many parts, some of which I loved and found really fascinating and others that I found a bit disappointing. Unfortunately the ending was one of the disappointing bits for me but overall I enjoyed the experience.

Set in the not too distant future, everyone has ‘the Feed’ which is essentially what we all have via our mobile phones now only wet wired into their brains so it’s all virtual. Nobody needs to form long term memories any more because it’s all online and they can search for any knowledge or information they need instantly and then discard it… it’s the next logical step to what we already have but this book goes a little bit further – what would happen if we came to rely on this technology and suddenly it was taken away.

Kate and Tom are a couple who have grown up with the Feed and never known a world without it, but they managed to survive the initial shock of having to live independenly. When their child is abducted in this harsh new world, they set out looking for her and uncover the truth behind the destruction of the Feed.

I found some of the concepts to be hit and miss, but that’s because I found that I had very set views about how the story should go and was disappointed when it didn’t go that way. For this reason, this review is incredibly subjective even by usual review standards because the writing was very compelling and the content very thought-provoking but I still wasn’t a huge fan even though I really wanted to be.

If you like dystopian novels, especially those that look at the impact of modern technology on society – give this a go and hopefully you won’t be as pig-headed a reader as I am!