Through the Looking Glass Children's Book Reviews
The Meme Plague
Fiction
For ages 12 and up
Unabridged audiobook (MP3 CD)
Performed/read by: Amy McFadden and Alexander Candese
Brilliance Audio , 2013 ISBN: 978-1480544437
It all began when a girl called Nora, a rich and protected girl, witnessed a bombing and saw a dead body. Her parents decided that she needed to go to a Therapeutic Forgetting Clinic to have her bad memories removed. All she had to do at the clinic was to describe her memory, take a pill, and the memory would disappear forever. While she was at a clinic she saw Micah, a boy from her school, spit out his forgetting pill and something about him made her do the same. She was going to hold onto her memories, good and bad.
Since then Nora and four other teens, Micah, Winter, Aiden, and Velvet, have been uncovering the secrets behind the company that created the forgetting pill and the Therapeutic Forgetting Clinics. The company, TFC, has its fingers in many pies and the teens have learned that the people behind the company are not just helping people forget things, they have also developed a microchip that can be used to plant false memories and thoughts in people’s brains. TFC is connected to the so-called terrorist bombings that have been terrifying people all over the world. Furthermore, TFC is working with politicians and others to force the people living in the city of Hamilton to have the TFC chip implanted in their heads. The people are told that the chip will keep them safe from the terrorists, but in reality it is being used to monitor them and implant memories and thoughts.
Though they have all been subjected to memory wipes and though they have chips in their brains, the teens are determined to do everything in their power to bring TFC and other crooked corporations and politicians down. Through a pirate radio broadcast called MemeCast, Aiden tells people to “fight the hack” and to take back their lives. With the help of friends and family members the teens set about creating a new unsanctioned and uncensored computer network called the MemeNet, a network for people to use that is not controlled by TFC or the government. Using salvaged pieces of old tech the teens build nodes that will connect computers all over the city. The nodes are taken to apartments, houses, and businesses. Slowly more and more people join MemeNet. The teens hope that between MemeCast and MemeNet they will be able to convince people that the time has come to say “enough.”
In this third book in the Memento Nora series listeners are taken on an exciting adventure and this time the characters in the previous books are all brought together, each one being given his or her own voice with each one telling his or her story. Secrets, big and small, are brought to light and we see how a small cause can grow until it becomes something big and powerful.
