Emotions – Arnie Cantarero

– Novel kindly sent by the author –

Original title : Emotions
Author : Arnie Cantarero
First published in : 2015
Genre : sci-fi
Edition : CIPP
Pages : 264
Status : read from 01/08/16 to 01/20/16
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Synopsis : Jason Ariaz is not your average 22-year-old. He has been enhanced but that’s only the beginning. He is an emotionless extraterrestrial born to human parents and living amongst us. Both him and his implanted thinking computer were damaged on landing and must go through life as less than what they really are. The purpose of their mission: to gain permanent emotions from the more primitive society that is Earth. If he is successful, he will be the first of his species to do so in nearly 200,000 years. Hope lies in the fact that he is capable of emotional episodes, and he has been able to forge friendships. However, he does have the chance of completing his mission if he can truly care for Ariel, the closest human in his life. But he better know his heart soon. Their lives are in danger of ending tonight unless he can recover what his species has lost.

Review : I have to say that I’m not an avid reader of science fiction, since I highly prefer fantasy or stories based on human characters, but this book has completely changed my point of view and I discovered a world that I can enjoy and appreciate. When I heard it was about extraterrestrials, I honestly thought that it would be about the life on another planet and that everything would be exaggerated to show the difference between Earth and other species. But I was wrong ! The author succeeded in creating a character with a special personality, living in our own world. Moreover, even if Jason can’t feel anything, we have to like him, because he has something very deep that we can’t deny. And even if he is an extraterrestrial, the readers can identify themselves to him, because he has to face life and its difficulties, as each of us. When we go deeper in our reading, we discover his main goal for his life and we just want to help him reaching it. Fortunately, there are other beautiful and helpful characters who are here to give some highlight to the story. I emphasize on it, this is not just an extraterrestrial story, there are deep friendships, some love stories and above all, we learn about ourselves in reading it. Is there someone that has never been confronted with his emotions and feelings ? I’m pretty sure that the answer is ‘no’. Honestly, I’m not an extraterrestrial (I swear !) but I could identify myself to Jason, lots of time, and I became fond to him, because of his lack of emotions and his fight to gain some. And as I said, the other characters are also very interesting (especially Ariel, who is French like me, aha !) and we don’t want to leave them as the reading is done.
Besides, Arnulfo did a really good job in his writing because he knows how to keep the readers in suspense and gives us the will to continue as soon as possible to read his book. I really liked the use of french expressions, it is fun to see what people think about our language and culture. I really enjoyed my reading even if there were maybe too much fight scenes for me. Apart from that, it is a really good book which deserves to be read !