The Inkpharm Library

#2 Book Review-INKED: DOOMED

REVIEW OF FIRST BOOK OF THE INK TRILOGY, INKED: DOOMED

Review given by Cynthia Nnadi
Author: Jesutofunmi Fekoya JEMMA7

★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★

TITLE:

        The title, Inked: Doomed, is simple and creative, and after reading it book, I can say it went a long way to hold the entire theme and plot into one central, unifying body.

COVER:

    The cover is also quite a simple one, and might I add that, simplicity may be the beauty of this literary piece after all. The splash of cyan, purple and other variant of ink colors, unifies it with the title which is indeed great. Nothing too bulky and nothing too overly bland. The right balance is just as though, an adequately spiced Nigerian Jollof.

BLURB:

    The blurb was short, captivating and apt. The inclusion of the futuristic nature of the book drew me in right from the blurb. Although, I must say, after reading the book, there maybe after all, some enticing inclusions that may have been added. Nonetheless, the blurb still gives adequate information of the story, is void of spoilers and is concise.

GENERAL OVERVIEW

     Inked: Doomed is the first book of the ink trilogy written by Jesutofunmi Fekoya.
      It is a futuristic story, told in sixty two years from present time—2081. The story is more of a Nigerian SciFi and tells of the possible adverse effects of scientific advancement on human survival, showing that while it may be greatly beneficial, it may also leave conspicuous dents on man's quest for continuous survival.

    It tells the story of a world, infected by ink, owing to the activity of a tech company: RICCO CORP owned by Erik Coal, station the adverse effect on the planet, but showing the survival mechanism in just a very minute part of the planet, in a distant village, hidden in a forest area, here in Nigeria.

    It is a story of survival, transformation, evolution, revolution and unique chains of heart-wrenching tragedy, which centres about the life of Ivy Adekoya—a young adult, who lost her parents to the Ink invasion at a very tender age. This story is one I would call, a "rural SciFi." We'd find out why.

    Well, going straight to the point, here are a few details given under various headings, as seen during the course of my read.

Warning: Proceed with caution. The subsequent content of this review may contain meagre amount of spoilers.

NARRATION:

      The prologue was interesting. I was a bit confused at first, seeing I could not exactly make out Ivy's age or location from the prologue. But, as I read on, I discovered it was a flashback.
In chapter one however, the story began to unfold. I couldn't help but notice the weight placed on the technology evolution so that it was kept at the a safe minimum, owing to the rural setting. For example, the presence of a pit latrine. It shows that evolution occurs parallel in rural and urban, but at a different pace, leading to different levels of advancement. Good you showed us that.

       However, at a point, it felt like the futuristic setting was merely a date, and I didn't really feel it much due to the rural setting—which as I observed was the plan all along. So, it feels, if the story was told in another POV, say from Erik Coal's POV, I'd have felt the technicality that really comes with science fiction, which was quite downplayed, due to the rural setting. So, it seemed like, the urban region was a parallel space which was ignored in the book— where the SciFi technicality actually dwelt, and the rural area was the focus, and the author portrayed that well and used it to her advantage, skillfully chipping in the resulting allowance for simplicity. It wouldn't have been all that simple if it were urban, trust me. So, this was a good insight on the part of the author.