Zero by Marc Elsberg

When a teenager is shot dead after chasing a criminal in the street, investigating journalist Cynthia Bonsant is led to the popular social media platform Freemee, a competitor to Facebook whose lifestyle app claims to give you everything you need to succeed in life.
But there is someone who warns against its evils: Zero, the world’s most-wanted activist, known for exposing the toxic truths behind social media giants and their pursuit of total control.
As Cynthia gets closer to unravelling the evil mastermind behind the Freemee site, she herself becomes a target. But in this world of hidden cameras, data glasses and hyper-smart phones there is nowhere to hide . . .

I love anything to do with technology so when I read the description for Zero I knew I had to give this a read because it sounded like something I would really enjoy and find interesting. I haven’t read many technology thrillers but this one really stands out because its something that could probably happen in the not so distant future. I remember reading the author’s other book Blackout and I really enjoyed it, so I had some high hopes for this book also.

I don’t really want to say too much about the plot because this is the sort of book that is best just to go into with the bare minimum information. For the me description should win you over and should make you want to immediately pick up this book and start reading it. I will say that the story is told from different character perspectives, which I found to be enjoyable even if a little confusing at times.

I did find Zero to have some really interesting and well throughout points about how we all rely on technology to do simple every day tasks and how technology is now a part of our life and its hard to imagine it not being there. It also made me think about how dependant and honest we are with technology and why we give some much information and data to these machine and we don’t really know what they are doing with our information. Zero does make you think about all these things and I honestly found it really intriguing.

I have read another book my Marc Eslberg before, I remember really enjoying it, and this was exactly the same. There is quite a bit of technical language present in his writing which might put off readers who don’t want to or don’t understand some technology terms. For me I found it easy to read and very informative and I don’t have a wide range of technology knowledge. It does mean when reading this you do come out thinking that you have learnt something you didn’t know before, which I think is always a bonus. Even though there is quite a bit of technical jargon the writing doesn’t feel like you are reading from a text book, there is characterisation and a plot throughout.

Even though I did enjoy the writing I did find the pacing of the book to be a little off in places and I did find some of the book difficult to get through. I think one of the problems is the really long chapters. Don’t get me wrong I have probably read longer chapters in other books compared to the ones in Zero, but I found it really hard to read from chapter to chapter. The chapters were really long and even though they had different character perspectives, the chapters still seemed to drag. I think a book like this should have short and snappy chapters, just to keep the readers attention and I think I would work better with the story if each character perspective had a new chapter.

Even though I did have some problems with Zero I still found it an interesting and intriguing read that I would recommend for all readers who love a technology thriller and maybe want to see the downside of relying so much on sharing so much data and information. If you are like me you will alway learn a thing or too about technology while reading Zero, which isn’t a bad thing. Just like his pervious book, Blackout, I could easily see Zero being turned into a TV series, fingers crossed it will happen one day. If you are looking for a realistic twist on life then you should definitely checkout out Zero.

I rate this book 4/5 stars

***I was sent a copy of this book for review. Everything in this review is my own honest opinions.***