This is a book that is eerily foreshadowing of our currently shitty times, to the point where you are like, "How did she know???"
The beginning of the book starts with Luce Cannon, a budding musician, running into a bit of trouble with her band as everyone is kicked out of their hotels for bomb threats, a stadium is blown up....which means historically she ends up as the last person who put on a concert before the world was shut down. It's not super spelled out what happened exactly, but seems to be a combination of terrorism and "the pox" breaking out. Anyway, large groups congregating is banned, everyone gets sick, and Luce's performing career as it was is over. Their world sounds like our world now, what with online schooling, being afraid to touch anything because of germs, etc., though I"m not sure how outbreak-ish things are in the future after the whole thing starts.
Twelve years later we're introduced to our other main character, Rosemary Laws, who's young, naive, and been kept sheltered even from the online world by her parents who moved to a farm. Rosemary has a shitty stalker-y customer service job working for "Superwally," the sort of thing you get directed toward in high school and you shouldn't be able to get any other job for. Except Rosemary does tech support for a company called StageHoloLive one day and they provide her with the means to go see one of their shows, and she is blown away and gets a job with them as a recruiter to go find talent and recruit them to the agency.
Rosemary's a little baffled as to how she got the job when she's pretty much never been exposed to live music before this, but what the heck, it's a dream job and she even gets to travel!
I'd like to mention that StageHolo works pretty much exactly like some of the more sophisticated online theater companies I've seen of late, such as Zoom Theatre and SF Shakes, what with having precise timing and marks the performers have to hit in order to sync, etc. That was amazing detail for something that hadn't quite happened yet, but yeah, the author probably did that research. And it is an awesome idea to keep performers performing, since they pretty much can't do it as a job otherwise in this world. Love it. I also liked the Hoodies, which seem to be hoodies hooked up with computers/VR/phones/what have you so you can experience shows like the old days. Though Rosemary's SuperWally Hoodie and the mandatory posters she has to hang on her wall ("You are valued but replaceable") and the call center stalkerishness is accurate and horrifying.
Anyway, Luce and Rosemary meet when Rosemary is directed towards the secret nightclub Luce is hosting, and Rosemary is totally inspired and finds new acts to recruit and it's all good... until something goes wrong and Rosemary's rose-colored glasses about her cool new gig get smashed and she's left with an ethical dilemma to figure out. To Rosemary's credit, she figures out something to deal with the issue, and by the time she runs into a traveling Luce again, she's got an even better idea....if Luce is willing to get involved.
I'm not going to spoil what Rosemary finds out, but it's a good reveal--not jaw dropping, but enough to personally hit Rosemary and her new temporary friends, and how Rosemary deals with it is also very good. She's sheltered and naive, but open and endearing and earnest. Luce has a hidden past of being Orthodox Jewish and having to leave her family entirely for not fitting in, but carrying on with life and music as best she can.
Quibbles:
Speaking as someone living in a pandemic right now, I really wanted more explanation about two things: (a) how the hell have terrorists managed to literally be everywhere and blow up everything to the point where the entire world is shut down twelve years later, and (b) is the pox pandemic still going on at this point? Is ANY of the stuff that shut down the world still going on? Because while Rosemary is at first nervous about being in crowds, touching other humans and hugging, etc. she gets over any fears of being in public pretty quickly and we don't seem to have any issues with actual outbreaks still happening. It seems like everyone is still indoors-ing due to...law? Habit? Any or all of the above? Because it seems like people are still able to have underground gigs without being bombed or getting sick, they just get arrested. Yeah, maybe that wasn't the author's priority, but I wanted to know how realistic it was to still be living in fear in this world at this point.
At this point is everyone being contained just to contain the population? It reminded me a little of reading The Last Days comes to mind and sometimes you want to be all "Hey, could we focus on the world outside of the music a bit more because some crazy is going on here that y'all need to pay attention to." I felt like that was important to clarify and it wasn't.
Also, while the ending is fitting of the characters and situation, it felt a bit anticlimactic to me, mainly because I kind of wonder if it had any effect at all in the long run or just for Luce that night. It ends on an open note, but I wondered anyway.
But overall, good book. I think I'm going to give it three and a half stars because I'm still wondering on that worldbuilding aspect, but it probably deserves four, really?
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