As part of the Blackthorn book tours publicity tour, I’m reviewing Lee Matthew Goldberg’s terrifyingly good nightmare, Orange City.
About the book
Imagine a secret, hidden City that gives a second chance at life for those selected to come: felons, deformed outcasts, those on the fringe of the Outside World. Everyone gets a job, a place to live; but you are bound to the City forever. You can never leave.
Its citizens are ruled by a monstrous figure called the “Man” who resembles a giant demented spider from the lifelike robotic limbs attached to his body. Everyone follows the Man blindly, working hard to make their Promised Land stronger, too scared to defy him and be discarded to the Empty Zones.
After ten years as an advertising executive, Graham Weatherend receives an order to test a new client, Pow! Sodas. After one sip of the orange flavor, he becomes addicted, the sodas causing wild mood swings that finally wake him up to the prison he calls reality.
A dynamic mash-up of 1984 meets LOST, Orange City is a lurid, dystopian first book in a series that will continue with the explosive sequel Lemonworld.
Praise for ORANGE CITY:
“In his compelling novel, ORANGE CITY, novelist LEE MATTHEW GOLDBERG, has crafted a unique dystopian thriller that manages to reveal our greatest fears about emerging technology and our anxieties at what the future holds.” – Raymond A. Villareal, Author of A People’s History of the Vampire Uprising.
My review
A nightmarish cross between 1984 and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.
In a future United States, Graham is offered a second chance by going to the mysterious city, run by the grotesque and monsterous The Man. Graham accepts the offer but finds he’s exchanged one prison for another.
I loved the use of colours to control Graham, and the atmosphere of paranoia that surrounded his life in the city.
I found Orange City an absorbing, enjoyable nightmare.
I award Orange City…
Orange City is available for $6.31 ebook and $18.99 print book on Amazon.
About the author
Lee Matthew Goldberg is the author of the novels THE ANCESTOR, THE MENTOR, THE DESIRE CARD and SLOW DOWN. He has been published in multiple languages and nominated for the Prix du Polar.
As well as the sci-fi novel, ORANGE City, his first YA series RUNAWAY TRAIN is forthcoming in 2021.
After graduating with an MFA from the New School, his writing has also appeared in The Millions, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, LitReactor, Monkeybicycle, Fiction Writers Review, Cagibi, Necessary Fiction, the anthology Dirty Boulevard, The Montreal Review, The Adirondack Review, The New Plains Review, Underwood Press and others.
He is the editor-in-chief and co-founder of Fringe, dedicated to publishing fiction that’s outside-of-the-box.
His pilots and screenplays have been finalists in Script Pipeline, Book Pipeline, Stage 32, We Screenplay, the New York Screenplay, Screencraft, and the Hollywood Screenplay contests.
He is the co-curator of The Guerrilla Lit Reading Series and lives in New York City. Follow him at LeeMatthewGoldberg.com
Media links:
Website: http://www.leematthewgoldberg.com/bio/
Twitter https://twitter.com/LeeMatthewG/
Iseult Murphy 
Orange City sounds good. “The Man” character is interesting. I can’t tell if he’s alien or AI or what, but he ain’t good!
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He is not! Look at him on the book cover with all those arms. Creepy.
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I would read this book.
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You should. I think you’d find it interesting.
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