Stepping into A.D. Enderly's "Complex" was like embarking on a rollercoaster through a post-apocalyptic landscape, and trust me, the twists and turns had my heart pounding faster than a drumbeat in the wasteland. Let me take you on a ride through the complexities of this dystopian world, where promises are made, societies crumble, and safety is an illusion.

From the opening lines that proclaimed a new era and the dissolution of governments, I was hooked. The promise of Complexes providing everything—food, shelter, protection—echoed a haunting note of foreboding. Val's promises to her dying father set the stage, and as her sister Kat gets abducted, the narrative spirals into a desperate rescue mission.

Our main character Val is a beacon of resilience, her determination radiating through the pages. Her promise to protect Kat fuels every decision, every risky move she makes. The author does a commendable job of creating characters that feel real, each with their struggles and motivations. The intricate web of lies, deception, and threats heightens the stakes, and you can't help but root for Val against the odds.

The world-building is another forte of "Complex." The dystopian setting, reminiscent of The Hunger Games and The Maze Runner, is vividly depicted. The eerie reality of a crumbling society and the allure of Complexes as both salvation and trap add layers to the narrative. The plot unfolds like a puzzle, each piece revealing a darker truth, and the pacing keeps you on the edge, eagerly turning the pages.

Now, for some of the negative aspects... There were moments where the complexity of the plot felt overwhelming. Some intricacies could have been streamlined to enhance clarity. Additionally, while the narrative is rich, there are instances where more in-depth exploration could have added emotional depth to certain scenes.

As I reached the final chapters, the crescendo of the story left me thirsting for more. The ending, both satisfying and tantalizing, hints at a potential continuation. My fingers are crossed for a sequel because the unresolved threads are dangling like tantalizing bait, and I'm ready for another round of heart-pounding suspense.

In conclusion, "Complex" by A.D. Enderly is a dystopian gem, a thrilling ride through a world teetering on the edge of chaos. The positives far outweigh the minor drawbacks, making it a compelling read for fans of the genre. Now, I'm on the edge of my seat, eagerly awaiting the next installment.

The world as we know is no longer exists. Society is divided into several small communities that continue to exist on the fringes of our leftover world and the Complexes, contained life styles built around and governed by large corporations. Life outside the Complexes is governed by the Legacy, but the choices are limited and shrinking with every generation.

A.D. Enderly has built a series of worlds inside whats left of todays world. He has populated it with families torn by the choices made and the consequences of each choice. Two sisters, one held captive to force the other's decision, will center the Legacy's freedoms against the predictable future of the Complexes. Readers will meet characters from all walks of each life who will leave you asking "what is the truth?"

While not a perfect read, this book shows a lot of promise for Enderly's future titles.

Okay, so this is a dystopian world but honestly there are not many thrills. Basically, you've got your have-nots hoping to rise to the haves, who are in turn trying to manipulate and overthrow the have-a-lots. Not too many sympathetic characters, but the reader still wants to see some fairness, some equity. Didn't really happen. Maybe future books will excite and stimulate the reader. Will look for their release.

Thank you, NetGalley for a copy of this book for an honest opinion.

This novel is a monster, 600 pages of dystopian world-building, character introductions, AI complex systems, and a whole lot of dark complicated stuff mixed in-between. It's a very interesting story once you get into it, bur wt you may need to keep a notebook nearby to keep character arcs and side characters straight. If you have an aversion to books with strong language, this is definitely not the book for you. Almost every character throughout this story cusses in some form or fashion. Overall, this is a pretty great story, and hopefully book two isn't very far off because that cliffhanger was a doozy.

I had such a hard time getting into this book. I put it down, picked it back up, put it back down, etc., because there is just so much information on way too many characters just thrown at you. I wanted to understand how the world became the way it was, but I didn't feel like that was really explained. But I kept with it, and I'm glad I did. About 40% of the way in, the lives of all of these characters sort of intersected, just a bit at first, but then a lot of things were explained.

A bit plus is that the world building was phenomenal. While I would have liked more background on the dystopian aspect of it, the here and now world was described in such a gritty, realistic way, I totally bought into it. And then, everything started moving at a much faster pace, and I was sucked right into the story.

I disagree with the YA designation, as I thought it was more suited to new adult or adult because of the language and the fact that a lot of the main characters just didn't scream out "YA" to me.

All told, once I got into the story, I enjoyed it very much. My advice if you read this book, give it a fair chance, and I don't think you'll be disappointed.

4/5 stars.

I received a copy of this book free of charge from NetGalley in exchange for my honest opinion.

I truly wanted to love this book. At first, there was so much going on, I felt like I lost track of who the main characters were and what was going on. As the story progressed, it became more clear and I was better able to manage the changes happening from chapter to chapter. This book is definitely action-packed. For the YA genre I saw it categorized, I was surprised at the amount of language involved. I thought the concept of the book was great and the world-building complex enough to keep me entertained.

This book was one of my most anticipated books, so I was very excited to get my hands on it. While I did like the read, it might be a case of my expectations being too high as I didn’t enjoy this like I was hoping to. It is an above average, and definitely an entertaining read, but I just didn’t connect to it like I had hoped for. The big problem for me was that besides all the action and entertainment, I didn’t really care for anything else. The characters and relationships needed some work I think.
Full review to come on YouTube..

Thought I’d break out of my comfort zone by reading a bit more science fiction, but this just wasn’t for me. I can see how diehard science fiction fans would enjoy it though. I also thought this would be an interesting read in a pandemic and that it was. A little long winded, not bad, just not for me.

This dystopian fiction just wasn't for me... The book started out strong but fell very flat. One star.

Thanks to NetGalley for the free e-book!

Only Legacy is holding up as a facsimile of a government, while corporations have taken over the world and try to get as many people as possible into a complex as corporate slaves. I think the worldbuilding in Complex is great. Piece by piece more is revealed, until I felt like I really knew the world, without lore dump and without it ever feeling slow. There just were so many interesting places to discover, so many interesting people to connect to!

About the many interesting people, I did feel like there were just too many points of view sometimes. It was great how they ended up being connected to the plot line and to each other, but because there were so many it sometimes got confusing.

Complex
by A.D. Enderly
A dystopian novel very similar to the Catcher in the Rye with language and sextual contexts that are not appealing to this reader. I found the world building as an amazing concept, and that the book has great potential. The characters are relatable.

The government has “failed.” It rains red which is poisonous to life. Corporations have taken over and made safe complexes for the people that work for them. There are levels — the higher the level you live in — the more important you are to the corporation. If you don’t join a complex, you live on the “earth” where people live who won’t be part of a complex live. The government gives these people a monthly sum that the people can barely live on it. Val and her baby sister Kat live on the government’s money. Returning home one day, Val discovers that Kat has disappear. Kat doesn’t come home. Val will do anything to find Kat. Will she find Kat?

I found this book to have excellent descriptions of the many characters that are in the story. It is a long novel that pet me intrigued as to what was going to happen. At times, I did get annoyed when reading this in the beginning as t book seemed to jump around by going from one character to another. Over all, it’s an interesting story to read.

I made it to 43% of the way through this one before giving up. I am not normally someone who DNFs books, especially long ones, because I always think there’s an opportunity for the tone to shift and a new plot hook to grab me and pull me in but this one just wasn’t doing it for me.

I fully expect a 700 page dystopian novel to have a lot of world building, but somehow this one seemed to have too much and not enough at the same time? There was a lot of slogging through details of the world which I actually don’t mind at all... except that somehow through all the world building I still felt I was missing so much context. How did the word get to to this point?

I also had a lot of issue with the pacing and passage of time. Like I stated earlier I have no issue with slow world building at the beginning of a new fantasy or dystopian series, but this book had a bad habit of passing time and not making it clear how much had actually passed.

I will say I did like the overall idea of the novel, and I think it still has promise with a bit more fine tuning. The author clearly has good ideas about how to bring in relevant and important topics to current days into a dystopian world without making it feel like it’s too heavy handed. I liked the idea of this book so much, but in execution it just wasn’t right for me.

I can see that it has decent ratings with other readers, so I definitely recommend you give it a shot to see if maybe it’s more your style than mine.

Personally, I give it 2.5 stars rounded up to 3

I tried, I really tried to like this book, but I never got into it -- too many characters introduced early on that seemingly had no connection to each other and a lack of early world-building. Much of what Bookgrrl said in her review posted October 22, 2020 on Goodreads holds true for me. Sorry.

COMPLEX seems to be a quasi-political treatise, told in disjointed vignettes by a varied set of characters. The haves and have nots are reminiscent of the today's divided world. In fact, some of the plot lines seem to be taken from the headlines in the second decade of the 21st century. It is a long, and sometimes pedantic, look at a near dystopian future. Seriously, how many ways can you describe endlessly long staircases and unimaginably tall structures? So many words are spent on these repetitious descriptions that the story, such as it is, is lost.

Is this the story of a kidnapped young teenaged girl and her sister's attempt to find her? Is this the political right and left warring for domination? Is it a coming of age tale of falling in love? The answer to all of these questions is sometimes 'yes' and more often no.

Although the myriad characters, each with their description repeated each time scenario changes to their point of view, are disconnected through most of the account, there comes a point where, at least some of them, come together and actually interact. Even when the players become connected early on, the reader suffers each anecdote from each point of view… explaining the pages long descriptions of structures blocking out the sky and staircases extending farther than the eye can see repeated ad nauseum.

AWOL(s), a non-acronym used throughout the book some 49 times drove me crazy. In my day, AWOL was the acronym for Absent Without Official Leave (yes, I am a veteran). I had to go back and search the term to find out if it was ever defined. What are AWOLs? Autowalls!

Speculative fiction has broadened the sphere of possibility since Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein. COMPLEX tells us, on the one hand, that the poor will be living in rusted shipping containers, stacked haphazardly to heights that block out the sun, while stained white shirts magically clean themselves of sweat and stains while the owner is wearing them. Yet, everyone has his own "system." At the very end of the book, we are told that this system is a built-in computer. Throughout the book, this miraculous system is used for communication, entertainment, navigation… you name it, the system does it. And, it can be turned off.

Overall, I feel like the time spent reading COMPLEX is time I will never get back. This is purported to be book one of a series... I won't be reading the rest of them.

Giving 4 stars for this dystopian near-future novel for the ambitious and thought-provoking ideas here. The first 1/4 can be hard to follow as several characters are introduced one by one. It is slow going to get to the meat of the novel. However, through them we slowly piece together what kind of world were in- governments have dissolved and corporations control everything of value, whereas the leftovers belong to the “legacy” areas. Computer AI has become part of daily life, to the point where the individuals have chips implanted that give them a personal AI to guide their lives.

As things come together and start to make sense in the story, the motivations for each character resolve and clarify. There are important questions raised about what constitutes freedom and comfort, and the trade offs we make to achieve them. Similarly, with AI and technological stuff, there are questions of losing our humanity and our soul as we outsource our lives and decisions to it, and retain no agency of our own.

Those issues coalesce into a satisfying ending that leaves open the possibility of a sequel. All in all an interesting read, slow at the beginning but picks up nicely afterward.

Author A.D. Enderly (https://adenderly.com) published the novel “Complex: A Dystopian Thriller” in 2020. This is the first of his "Silent Beautiful Universe" series.

I categorize this novel as ‘R’ because it contains scenes of violence, mature language, and mature situations. The story is set in a dystopian future. Governments have given way to corporations.

The book has several characters, though the most important are 19-year-old Val and her 12-year-old sister Kat. Val and her sister are now orphaned and struggling to survive. Their father warned them both about giving in to the corporations and joining a complex. A Complex is a corporate-run city. They are willing to 'take care of you' for a price.

When Kat is kidnapped, Val does everything she can to find her. Concurrent with Val's quest there are other powers at work. The pharmaceutical company NovaGenica is making a move for more power. One of the large complexes is doing everything it can to recruit clients. This includes murder and terrorism.

Beyond this AI systems run many of the establishments. While Val has found a romantic interest in 18-year-old Trevor, her focus is on saving Kat.

I mostly enjoyed the 17 hours I spent reading this 595-page science fiction novel. The first part of the novel I found very slow. Fortunately, the pace picked up after the first 15% of the novel. There are many plots that are intertwined. After getting past the beginning, the novel was very good. I do like the selected cover art. I give this novel a 4 out of 5.

You can access more of my book reviews on my Blog ( https://johnpurvis.wordpress.com/blog/).

My book reviews are also published on Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/31181778-john-purvis).

Not usually into books of this length, Complex really blew me away because it was able to completely hold my attention for it's entirety of 700 pages. Five separate books in one, though not described as that, this was a rollercoaster from start to finish of an epic tale in which a dystopia was ruled by businesses. Which, if you ask me, is actually a very real option for the future, especially in places where they have more power than they should. I don't know why this hasn't been written about more often, because I really just find it fascinating, and I can't get enough. But you know me, I'm obsessed with all things tech, scifi, and dystopia. What more could I ask for? This book is perfect for me.

Described as a story of two sisters Val and Kat, who are left alone after the death of their father in their dystopian world of Legacy, the area just outside of the Arc, a dystopia run by businesses. Though it seems like everything is better and safer, there are just different kinds of threats hiding behind the green grass and order. But this story is so much more than just that. The characters range from very poor, to very wealthy, all having completely different personalities and lives. And each person has their own piece to bring to the perfectly put together puzzle. After Kat is kidnapped in the middle of the night, Val blames herself for not being able to fight off the offenders, but can't sit around feeling sorry for herself forever. She does what she has to do to get information about her missing sister, including selling her body online for a scummy man who claims he has what she needs. But what she digs herself into is far beyond anyone could have ever guessed would happen.

There's Trevor, a romantic interest for Val and a very helpful character in the story with his hacking skills and clever way of thinking, Riku, a high up man in the military who just wants to right the wrongs in the world, and hopefully save his friend and her child. There's Ian, an insanely smart hacker who we don't get to know very thoroughly but he really ends up helping out in the end, Ray, an assassin with a drug addiction who doesn't really care about anyone other than the people he's working for, and Manalo, a sweet old grandfather who just wants to have a purpose for his life again, after the loss of his wife. And there's a few other characters we get to see the world through, but really all of these characters breath life into this epic and long winded novel. Without their lifelike personalities, I would have lost interest a long time ago, because even though I'm extremely interested in the world that they live in, you need good characters to keep everything moving along at a steady pace. And boy, did it.

I think this book is an amazing mix of dystopian scifi, futuristic tech with the computers inside every single person, and a very intriguing story of what could go wrong when businesses end up taking over for the government. When emergencies happen, like a virus that spreads too quickly and mutates too fast to keep up with, and especially when the computers get too strong for us to handle. When they realize that they want more than just to help, that they want to do. And I loved every moment of it. The end of the book also hints to a series, which I'm very excited to deep dive into once it's released. With that ending, who wouldn't be? I'm very glad I got a chance to check it out, and I think that the beautiful cover it has would be welcomed into anyone's intensive book collection. Honestly, I'd even like a poster of it if that was a thing. It's just so aesthetically pleasing, and says so much about the book without having to actually say anything. Overall, if you're a fan of tech, scifi, dystopia's, and stories of survival no matter what, than I definitely recommend checking this book out.

(Radioactivebookreviews.wordpress.com)

As traditional, or "legacy," governments around the world collapse, complexes have stepped in to take their place. Complex life seems very appealing on the surface -- guaranteed work (with a purpose!), a safe and clean living environment, and the flexibility to come and go as you please with ample availability of day passes. Legacy governments, on the other hand, issue a Standard Universal Credit (a kind of universal basic income), but work is rare, and drugs and risky sex saturate the legacy living quarters, making day-to-day life precarious at best. But Complex life comes at a cost: a lifetime of indentured servitude in exchange for protection.

Many of these complexes are owned by a biotech company called Novagenica. As a virus begins to emerge in the legacy housing areas, Novagenica is already putting their best effort into combating it. But just how many rights did they trample to develop the medicine, and what will people have to give up to get it?

I was super intrigued by the premise of this book, and as a concept, I would rate it 8/10. I see so much potential in this novel, but it just did not deliver. A couple more rounds with a good editor and it could be something truly incredible. In it's current state, it's extremely hard to follow the worldbuilding, the timeline, or the characters. I did make it through to the end, and I'm glad I did because the novel develops tremendously as it goes along, but boy was it a slog.

There are way too many side characters and the perspective shifts between them too often. I was ~60% of the way through this book before I could even tell for sure if it had a main character. It does start to come together about 40% of the way through, and I think the author was trying to give the reader that moment of realization where something really complicated starts to fall into place neatly like a jigsaw puzzle and the final image is just mindblowing, but this was not it. It had elements of that; but it is not there. My head was spinning trying to keep track not just of all the characters whose perspectives were followed, but the side characters in each of those vignettes as well. And it's not fun trying to figure it out like solving a puzzle is; it's just confusing.

To top it off, the characters all have a very similar voice, similar personalities, similar senses of humor. And they're all very dark and very crude. In all but one case (and there are many cases--especially in the first half), descriptions of sex are extremely impersonal, often rough, and very frequently nonconsensual. Men are leering at literally everyone. Women are virgins who exist to please men. Casual nonconsensual sex is romanticized (such as with the Group Involuntary Ejaculation, which apparently is such a cool thing!). There are many descriptions of literal children and very young adults being forced or otherwise coerced into sexual encounters. These descriptions of sex and the sexual jokes, etc. are so gross that I have to think they are intentionally part of portraying just the trauma of living in this world, but that is not what I came to this novel for.

It's also very gory, especially in the last quarter or so. There are elaborate descriptions of people's experience being hanged, having their limbs cut off, shooting someone in the head at point-blank range, watching someone you love bash in someone's head with a police baton. It is stomach-churning and very hard to read. If that's your jam, great, this is for you. It is not for me.

Lastly, the writing needs some clean-up. The author has some tendencies that are honestly distracting. The biggest one for me was the urge to overexplain, as in "'I don't know,' he lied. He knew why but couldn't disclose information on impending operations" or use redundancies as in "a sizeable one-time payment that has yet to be repeated" or to lazily externalize his own thought process as with "Not just older. She's...she searched for the right word. More mature, yeah, but it's more than that. Stronger. That was it. She could see it in her sister's jaw, especially in those eyes that seemed calm and wise at the same time."

In short, what I wanted from this book after reading the blurb was technological and cultural worldbuilding, a strong narrative driven primarily by Val/Kat, and a clear decision point arising from understandable circumstances that tugged me in both directions simultaneously. What I got was a whole host of characters I couldn't keep straight, a world I didn't understand technologically or culturally, a LOT of crudeness and gore and general grossness, and a very late plot twist that nods at a sequel (that could also be interesting if written better).

I read this over the course of several days and every time I picked it up I looked at the first sentences and thought 'who is this, again??' There are a lot of different POVs that switch often, and even though Enderly does a good job differentiating, early on you have to really pay attention. Later, he continues to give all the characters' stats at the POV changes even though we no longer need them, which could have been left out as the book is really long.

I've never read anything quite like it. Can't wait for the next installment!

I received an ARC from Luminary Media and NetGalley.com. I wasn't required to write a positive review & opinions expressed are my own. FTC 16 CFR, Pt 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements &Testimonials in Advertising.