Infomocracy (The Centenal Cycle, #1)

This was a slightly difficult book for me to get through, not through any fault of the book, but just because with the Canadian election currently in full debate cycle and Brexit still filling the headlines and the US reelection fast approaching and Trump's impeachment continuing to on-and-off-again, I'm just so overloaded with election and politics that it was a bit hard to face so much in my entertainment also.

That said, this is a very intelligent, thoughtful book looking at a world which is divided into "centenals" of about 100,000 people each; and whichever party wins the most centenals globally forms a "supermajority" which gives it more power over the others. The story's set just before an election (elections happen every 10 years) and we follow a number of different characters viewing the politicking from different perspectives and trying to push different agendas. The two main characters turn out to be Ken, who works for Policy1st (one of the parties), and Mishima, who works for Information, which seems to be a sort of central internet provider/Google substitute type service that is used globally and that also runs the elections.

There are suspicions of parties trying to influence the election, there are voters behaving stupidly and short-sightedly, there is some interesting hypothetical future technology, and the structure of the centenals in general is quite interesting and rather reminiscent of the city-states in Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash". There was a little too much info-dump exposition in trying to explain all the complex politics, which made some parts move a bit slowly; and there were some characters whose perspectives we were given but who didn't really seem that important to us or to the plot in the end (like Domaine, and Yoriko) -- they didn't really seem necessary to me? At any rate I didn't really get attached to them, or even get much of a feel for their personalities. I enjoyed Ken and Mishima however, and once we got out of the politics exposition and more into the action it was an interesting story with, of course, some cautionary tales for our own current politics.

Good first novel with very interesting ideas, would pick up another book by the author, although would hope for maybe a little less political development and a little more character development instead next time :)

Ken, a campaign worker for PolicyFirst, and Mishima, a special agent working for Information, are the two main POVs in this micro-democracy election thriller.

I enjoyed the premise of the micro-democracy a lot. Humanity is divided into 100.000 people "Centenals". Each centenal gets to elect their government. Governments are the equivalent of our political parties. Each "government" can govern one or many Centenals. They make the major laws, rules for their Centenals. A government can have a Centenals in Europe, Asia, the Americas etc. spread out all across the globe. A few major powers are: Heritage - current and past holder of the Supermajority (most Centenals), Philip Morris (the most powerful of the so-called 'Corporates'), PolicyFirst, Liberty.

Elections are held every 10 years. It's election time and campaigning is wild. Information is the agency that is not itself running as a government but providing everyone with ALL the information - at the blink of an eye. This is after all a future high-tech society. But while war has been eradicated other problems haven't. And some people maybe aren't all that happy with the political structures that have - at this point - existed for the past 20 years.

I loved the premise, loved the tech - the way Information works is interesting. It's not quite the same as our internet more like... a giant Facebook with ever more surveillance. The tech is brilliant and enjoyable - one of the better pieces of the book, along with the protagonists.

However, this was published at the start of the previous US election cycle and at this point two years later I am still not quite recovered from having had enough about elections. The whole plot revolves around the election however and debates, and campaigning, manipulation and plots to possibly change the out-come.

What made up for that are the two main characters who both get drawn into the swirling machinations of those who want to manipulate their way to the top. Both Ken and Mishima are idealists who fight for what they believe is right.

Where it all fell apart for me was at the end when the reveals and resolutions happen on every page and I just never figured out how they caught one of the bad guys. How did Liberty get caught in the end? I figured out what happened with Heritage - the tunnel thing was obvious and they had proof of that. But the catching of Liberty was more subtle... So I kind of missed that one in all the turmoil at the end, I just realized that suddenly the story was over and everything resolved.

This is a 3.5* for me fun-wise. Not sure if I will read the sequel. However it was well-written and executed so I have to round up.

Perhaps it wasn't wise to read this futuristic novel of ideas /science fiction during the second year of an endless election cycle - or perhaps it was, because it's about how the world might change the system of government, creating small government units, all sharing a common information system to provide facts and run elections. It suffers from being pretty slow to begin with, but picks up as something goes terribly wrong and the Information crashes in the middle of an election. Who's behind the sabotage, and what is the object? The world building is interesting, but I found the wonkishness ultimately not totally satisfying. One touch that amused me: the national library in Paris has no employees - I guess libraries, even when highly sophisticated, run themselves - but the Information has enormous numbers of workers, kind of the reversal of the common sense that the Internet somehow just runs on servers and algorithms.