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.

Pollution. Overcrowding. Poverty. Disease. Hunger. Rampant crime. Political upheaval and uncertainty. A pandemic. People struggling to survive just one more day, and then another.
And a few of them, here and there, deciding—for one reason or another—that they’re not gonna take it any more [hopefully you just started bobbing your head to Twisted Sister, but if you weren’t, until right this second, you’re welcome].

It could be today, tomorrow, or at some point not so far into the future, as in A.D. Enderly’s serpentine, dystopian sci-fi series debut, Complex.
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Everything basically sucks, in this dog-eat-dog world—especially if you’re just a nobody, trying to live your life—and Val knows that better than most. At 18, she’s already been the “parent” in her family for a couple years, responsible for food, shelter, and the general well-being of not only herself, but also of her younger sister, Kat.

Sure, things could be easier… if she agreed to basically sign her life away on a handful of dotted lines, giving up her few freedoms so they could move to a “Complex”—in essence, a tiny nation-state, created and run by mega-corporations, which provide safety, jobs, shelter, and other bright and shiny amenities for all inhabitants under their “care”… in exchange for those inhabitants relinquishing all of their rights and free will. And the last promise Val made to her father before he died was to never, ever, do that.

When Kat is kidnapped from their tiny hole-in-the-wall apartment in the dead of night—for reasons Val can’t even begin to imagine—the choice to remain independent is no longer so cut-and-dried, though; Val has no idea who took her sis, or why, or how to even begin to get her back. All Val knows for sure is that finding Kat is the only thing that matters.

With a little luck—and a few chance encounters with other decent people, who have no more fondness for or allegiance to any of the Complexes than she has—Val hatches a risky plan. She soon realizes that what she’d previously thought was “the worst” part about those alluring institutions—the forfeiture of one’s freedoms—is actually just the tip of the iceberg… and that rescuing Kat from the clutches of one such Complex will be a helluva lot harder than she could've dreamed.

It isn’t only Kat’s life, or those of Val-and-friends, which hang in the balance; in this race for their lives, the very fate of humanity—meaning the futures of millions of people—dangles by a tenuous thread. And Val, well... she's not about to give up, not without a fight to the death.
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So here’s my quandary: if I let this review sit right there, a lot of you might think Complex sounds pretty interesting [it is], go out and pick up a copy (or download an ebook), then dive right in… at which point you’d probably scratch your head and circle back to here, making sure you grabbed the right book.

Why? Because—although I laid out the essential pieces of the key plot for you—there’s A LOT going on in this book. There are A LOT of characters (whom Enderly takes the time to give his readers a good sense of), doing A LOT of things. There are political machinations, labyrinthine plots, and a fair number of back stories—basically, all sorts of sketchy little alleyways to poke your head down (before trying to get back to the main path… or paths). Each chapter is told from a different POV, alternating between a dozen or so different characters, doling out the story in a piecemeal sort of fashion (which means keeping track of who everyone is, and fitting in each little piece of the story into the overall bigger picture, takes a concerted effort).

[Arrrrrgh, I can hold in the “dad joke” pun no longer: Complex is... complex! There, now that’s out of my system.]

Enderly masterfully weaves together a fascinating tale, chockfull of despair, desperation, and grim determination… interspersed with moments of humor, love, and hope. I thoroughly enjoyed Complex, on the whole, and recommend it to fellow fans of dystopian sci-fi. (And when the next book in the series drops? I'll be snapping it up.)

Just… don’t go into this one thinking it’ll be a walk in the park, or that you can speed-read it. (I’m not a speed reader, so YMMV, but let’s just say you’ve been warned, mkay? ;))
~GlamKitty

I had a HARD time getting into this book. Learning all the terminology and keeping up with different character chapters was a bit much at the beginning. As I kept reading, I understood why it was written this way and enjoyed it. You get sucked in by the characters and are invested in their well-being.

It took me a little while to start reading this one and then it took me even longer to finish it but I think there’s some interesting stuff happening in this story. First off I’d like to thank the folks at NetGalley for getting me a copy early even though I didn’t quite get to read it as early as I’d have liked.

We’re thrown into a world of the future, where the construct of society is that people are living in levels and tiers, based on either a social score, or the decision to sign their lives away in a contract to a Complex or Medical organization called Novagenica. No one really understands what the end result of any decision will be but they know that the struggle of life is real and there’s only a hope of what can make things better.

This story is written in books, although I don’t know that the books really make any sense or difference. Instead though we also get chapters that are each through the eyes of a different character, one who has a unique circumstance or role in society and we watch how it all slowly converges as we get to the end of this one.

We know that there’s a group of people who want complete control.

we know that there’s a virus that’s being developed to limit the population or potentially restructure the population in a way that will create a better more thriving society.

There’s also an aspect of AI that we see come to a head in a way that we all fear, even in current day.

There are groups of people who’s stories are more intertwined throughout this book. We see Val and Kat who are sisters who don’t have the same view on life and that just smells like disaster coming. Kat’s kidnapped and it makes everyone realize what’s important. The quest to find Kat leads Val to Trevor who becomes not only an integral part of the story but a love interest.

Trevor leads them to an organization that has a connection to tech and a desire for more power and that in turns leads them to their doom.

Dramatic yes, but I think that’s what this story is setting us up for. The thought that when you’re power hungry, bad things happen. When you are selfish bad things happen, and when you allow tech to gain too much strength, bad things will happen.

What’s interesting about this story though is the way that it ends. There’s a scene and a conversation that one of the main characters has with a ‘pastor’ of sorts, someone who’s proposition in life is that the idea of tech leads only to bad things, well, in that convo, there’s something interesting that happens. There’s a shift, a change in reality, and then the last note in the story is the notion that there’s more to come – and that someone like this pastor is the one who can help enact the change……driven by AI.

So…I left a lot out because frankly, there’s so much going on in parallel paths in this story that i’m not sure which story line is the most important. I’m also not sure what the real plot or point of this story is either – there’s just a lot of paths that merge and separate, bringing things to a head and then blowing them up. All in all, i’d have to say that this wasn’t My favorite book, but I know that there are folks out there who will love it for the ideas of what the future can look like if we don’t take precautions now.

Complex by A.D. Enderly is such an amazing book! I loved the original, fresh setting of the world and found it terrifying and interesting.

It took patience, and was a bit of a slower read than my normal daily-reads, but it was worth it. The story is SO "complex", and the world building is too, that the constant shift of POV's occasionally threw me for a loop. This being said, I really loved the premise, and throughly enjoyed the final execution. A.D. Enderly wove a unique story, and it really sat in my find for a few days after I finished it. I often re-read books, and might pick this up again in a couple of years for a refresh, because even now I feel like I could do with a re-read to pick up anything I missed the first time.

The Complex is a sci-if dystopian look at the future where the social classes are divided into groups and society lives on different levels depending on where they are classified. The upper levels are generally oppressive and some of the upper hierarchy devise a plan to eliminate the lower class (Legacy members) that don’t conform and enter into servitude for the upper groups. Add in conflicting security groups (PerSense, ArcSec, and Talksmall), an AI that can monitor and control people, an assassin, kidnapped children used as guinea pigs for genetic engineered viruses, a conspiracy to remake the Legacy region and one to destroy it, hackers, drug addicts, and secret alliances, and you get a small idea what this story is about.

This is not the easiest book to read. Events flip around a lot. People often do things that really makes no sense to me. Things are attempted, failed, then little is explained. Other times, objectives are successful or failures and you have no clue what happened or why it unfolded the way it did. The end is partially resolved, but left open for a sequel. Lots of unanswered questions.....

Not a bad book, but I found myself struggling to get through parts of it. With a look if you are into this genre.

I received this as an ARC from NetGalley and this is my unbiased review.

Wordy, confusing, hard to follow, unlikeable characters, uninteresting plot, too much description, not enough conversation or character development.

And at almost 600 pages, waaaaay too long. Could have been a quick, more entertaining read with just 250 pages.

Unnecessarily complicated and disjointed, this novel does not deliver on its promise. While the idea may have been good the execution seemed hectic and disorganized. The characters never really had time to develop and there was no clear path to the storyline. Unfortunately, it was a chore to complete.

I enjoyed the premise of this book and the world-building. However, it was difficult to read and I ended up not being able to finish because there were so many different points of view that I couldn't keep the characters straight. Each chapter told from a different point of view and I spent the first several pages of the chapter trying to remember which character this was.
Granted, I feel that in 2020 it's not the fault of any book that my attention is hard to keep, and I certainly could have kept a running list of the characters- they're all named, so it would have been easy enough to keep a tally of who was who, but that was a bit more intense than I was looking for in a book.

That said- that plot and world were unique and compelling and I do feel that I want to try picking up the book again and finishing because I really want to know what happens! My suggestion: If you want a complex (pun intended!) read with many points of view and interesting use of technology, just make sure you have a decent amount of brain power to allot to keeping the characters straight.

It took me a while to get into the story, but it was worth it. The book is very detailed in creating a world like no other and had a lot of main characters which made it harder to get into the story for me. Overall, not a bad book and I look forward to reading more from this author.

Set in a dystopic future, with a huge cast of characters, this book outlines the struggle between Legacy, and the Complex. In Legacy, Val and her sister are barely surviving on government rations and government housing. In the Complex, life is secure, people are fed and housed, but they must give up their very lives to the system. When Val's sister is kidnapped, she is forced to dig through a wide-spread Complex conspiracy.

With the huge cast of characters, this book was a bit slow to start. That being said, the world was extremely well crafted, detailed, and believable. Once I figured out how all of the characters were connected, I had a hard time putting the book down. Overall, well worth picking up.

This was the one book that disappointed me this month. I didn’t have super high expectations, but a I started reading it, I really enjoyed it and couldn’t wait to see where it headed. But then it took a really weird turn at the end that felt like a cop-out and it made me super disappointed. It is set in the near future where people more or less live either in a Complex (you more or less sell yourself to the company) or you live on the fading government dole. As I said, it started out as a really interesting view of security of the Complexes vs. living on a universal basic income from a government that is slowing being swallowed by Complexes. There was discussion of autonomy and power and government. But then the end came. And it more or less blamed everything on an AI (rather than the crappy humans that got the story that far) and a little magic thrown in. It just didn’t fit for me. I wouldn’t recommend.

Wildly imaginative! Wonderful characters. Interesting plot. Vivid descriptions. Simply a GREAT read!

*I received a complimentary ARC of this book in order to read and provide a voluntary, unbiased and honest review, should I choose to do so.

DNF at 20%. The constantly shifting POVs on top of the dense, inexplicable world-building made this a convoluted experience and one that I could not for the life of me get through without having to agonize over the 500 or so pages I had left.

3 stars mainly because if this had a movie rating it would be rated R and I just think that's unnecessary. Mostly for language- Very rarely did a character speak or think without swearing. There was some sexual content and gore but nothing really graphic. Considering the setting of the book is dystopian and within that setting a lot of the story takes place in the depraved sectors of the city, some of the content is understandable in order to portray said depravity, but it can be done in a better way.

This book leaves you on a cliffhanger (a second book fairly likely) however, because of everything just mentioned I'm sad to have to leave the story. It really was an interesting premise- A futuristic dystopian Midwest settlement where people are divided between Complex, Legacy, or Arc living depending on their wealth, social scoring, or desperation. Val and Kat are eking out a living in Legacy after their dad dies when Kat is kidnapped. The sisters' paths become entangled with other characters as Val tries to find Kat amidst increasing violence in their home sector and the entrance of a potential pandemic-sized virus.

As others have said, it does take a minute to get your bearings as we aren't given much background as to the 'why' the world is the way it is. Some of it is hard to picture, though I would bet if it was cinematized it would be reminiscent of Total Recall mixed with Maze Runner. It is told from several different POVs. They are each introduced at the beginning in their own story. Seemingly disjointed, they all eventually come together at some point in the story. I did make a few notes on each one to help me keep everyone straight since the book is long and I would be reading it off and on. I had a hard time distinguishing between the character's own thoughts and the voice of the AI, but since I was reading an ARC, I'm assuming the published version will differentiate that better... and also fix the grammatical errors I kept finding.

I would assume part of the author's intent was to make some sort of political/economic statement. What one would give up for comfort and security. What one would endure for freedom. How it's hard to move up in the world. The manipulation and oppression of the poor. The psychological benefits of having work to do. The scoring of a person's behavior and choices to incentivize a particular end result. The consequences of lack of law enforcement. I could see a college class analyzing those components of the story.

Though Enderly had no qualms with profanity, to his credit, he wrote suspense successfully. There is a lot of plot movement and action in the story. He is not afraid to kill off or injure his characters, so you never know what will happen. <spoiler> BUT- I knew as soon as there was AI in people's heads that the AI was gonna go rogue. Because based on literally every depiction of AI, their overtaking of humanity is inevitable. It's a bit of a tired premise, but if there are still people out there who are still trying to probe the depths of AI/human combinations, then I suppose we need more books and movies showing how stupid of an idea that is. </spoiler>

Looking back on the book as I write this review, I think this book had a lot of potential, but I just think all the things that would make it rated R just really over shadows the good parts for me. I hate when authors include so much of that. A good story shouldn't need it. If that stuff doesn't bother you and you love a good sci-fy, futuristic, dystopian action story, then this is for you.

Sidenote: Lots of authors end up overusing certain words in their books that I like to point out. In this book, it was the word 'effluence'

This book had a lot of POVs and secondary characters that I was often confused and had to keep trying to remember who was who and who was a part of what. The story also felt choppy at times as well, and I’d get distracted from what was going on. Even with the issues though I have to say, I really enjoyed it. I devoured it and look forward to the next one. I would really have liked to see some background included, like what caused this new society compared to the world it was before.

this is an OK book, Difficult to read since the story is written in weird tense. I would not recommend that to anybody. I barely got through first chapter before I gave up.

Wow! I feel like I just read a sci-fi written by Joe Abercrombie. This novel is gripping, compelling and very intricate. Many details are woven into the story and come together to create a world full of political intrigue, corruption and a world that fights back at every turn.

If there were a grimdark sci-fi subgenre, this would fill that slot. Enderly lays the groundwork of this novel through the lens of multiple POVs. Many times we are only given the glimpse of the world that the characters know, allowing the reader to build the world by piecing the multiple POVs together.

The character building in this novel is top notch, and while it takes a while for the plot of the novel to come together, each individual story is compelling enough to push the story forward.

All-in-all Complex is a fantastic read and I look forward to more by this author. I will definitely be picking up a hard copy of this one soon.