Series Information: Matriarchs – Silicon Gods

Pages: 411

Publishing date: October 11th, 2019

You can get a copy from Amazon.

Flesh comes cheap in a machine world

Doctor Rick Stenslandt has always advocated against the fusion of man and machine. But after a near-fatal accident, he is forced to accept ocular implants or go blind, end up unemployed, and without social status.

But something goes wrong. Now he remembers people he has never met before—influential members of the corporate elite that governs the world. And they have all been murdered.

Worse, it seems he’s the next target.

On the run from the police and a pair of augmented assassins, Rick seeks refuge in the infamous alleys of the megacity. But to protect the ones he loves, he cannot hide forever. Now he must figure out his borrowed memories and his connection to the victims, before it’s too late. 

Through Strangers Eyes by Chris Sarantopoulos is a book that was allocated to Trin from Portable Magic and me. As previously explained, we read approximately 20-25% (in my case 35%) of each book before taking a decision on whether we recommend it to the group as a quarterfinalist or not. Trin and I reached the same conclusions, so we consolidated our opinion for this post.

Through Strangers Eyes starts with a really engaging initial scene, portraying the accident that led to Doctor Rick Stendlandt having to get some ocular implants, despite his being against them. The plot for me in general was engaging and interesting to read.

Despite that, we felt that parts of the writing, and some aspects of the craft, as can be the reiteration of certain verbs, something that we think could be improved. We also found too many dialogues used as drivers for the actions, making the pace irregular sometimes, and abusing too much of this tool.

While we found this book interesting and fun to read, a solid 3-star read if you ask me, that’s not what we are looking for when choosing which books advance forward in this competition. So, Through Strangers Eyes gets a NO from Wayward Stars team and gets cut from this competition.