Channel Zero

Channel Zero wasn't really a book I enjoyed. I had a lot of trouble following the story, and a lot of it just sort of blended together as I read. I did like the concept behind the main character and her interview in the story's midpoint was probably the high point for me, as it brought up a lot of thought-provoking points about the accuracy of media reporting. I also enjoyed the concept of her tattoos mocking the absurd range of corporate advertising, and the use of background news reports mixed into the dialogue was clever and well executed, but after that, the book falls apart for me. A mixture of the stark black and white, the mostly uninteresting character designs, and the high-contrast backgrounds made it fairly difficult for me to read as cohesive, and my overall lack of interest in its politically driven, media saturated plot meant I didn't really have much drive to go back and clarify things. In addition, I found the concept behind the backstory a bit too farfetched, even for a media dystopia. The notion of the United States becoming a self-declared holy land, where everything is driven by censorship screamed too much of hyperbole for me to be able to suspend my disbelief. While other stories ,such as Alan Moore's V for Vendetta, also go for this exaggerated realworld state-turned-dictatorship setting, I was still able to engage myself with them on other levels, such as character arcs and a completed, but open-ended plotline. I don't know if Channel Zero was simply a plot more relevant for the time it was written, or more likely, simply is incompatible with my tastes, but I'm not exactly rushing to reread it.