You read the blurb and you imagine what this book is going to be about... You may be right on the mark, but there is so much more. Goldberg is a clever writer. He writes with excellent pacing, giving us pearls of information to fill in the picture of this city, how it is run and the characters in it.

This book certainly makes you think about choices and what you would do to keep the status quo.

I would recommend this book as I got to the 80% mark and had to go out, and I really didn’t want to put it down. I certainly wanted to find out how this story was going to end.

This book would be a fantastic book to use in the classroom for older/adult students. I believe the amount of discussion that would be produced would be enormous.

Trigger Warning: Mention of past child abuse, to set the scene for the character in the present time.

Links to Amazon and other social media added closer to/on release date.

Imagine you are sentenced to a long prison term for committing a horrible crime, and then you were offered the chance to live in a secret location, be given a job, get paid for it, have a private apartment, but with only one catch - you can never leave.

Would you take that chance?

This is only a taste of what you'll experience in "Orange City," by Lee Matthew Goldberg; a well-written dystopian novel about a man named Graham who takes that chance to live in The City and be a functioning member of society.

Of course, not all is what it seems.

When Graham is asked to test out a new product for the ad agency he works for, the layers of The City begin to peel away, and Graham sees the truth behind the apparent facade.

Or, is it all in his imagination? Can he even trust his own eyes and ears? Is he going insane?

The book was a page-turner for me. It's the fastest I've read a book in ages, and that's saying something. There are echoes of 1984, The Matrix, Brave New World, and The Hunger Games in this story, but it has a freshness all its own.

The author keeps the pacing quick and never lingers before the next complication hits. It's a smooth read. A fun read. That is, if you like reading about worlds turned upside down, like I do.

If you like sci-fi with a bit of an oppressive twist to it, "Orange City" will be your jam. It held me in its grip throughout, and I think you'll like it, as well.

Great dystopian fiction, I was already familiar with the author's crime fiction and always love to see good writers try to work in new genres. Great characters. interesting plot. A solid read!

Thanks to Lee Matthew Goldberg, Atmosphere Press and NetGalley for giving me access to this book for review.

First of all, I was already intrigued by the cover, really, is stunning, but then the summary was the cherry on top. In this book we follow mainly Graham, who gets offered an opportunity like no other, go to live in The City, a place where the past doesn't matter and people get a second chance. The City is ruled by this mysterious figure (or should I say disfigured, please excuse this terrible pun) called The Man, extremely tall and with definitely spared arms. But, of course, not everything is as good as it seemed.

I'll keep everything vague so you don't get spoil, cause it really is worth a read!

The mystery was really well crafted from the beginning, I found myself thinking about the book while I was supposed to be studying for finals. The pace works also great maybe struggling a bit towards the end, when everything felt a little bit rushed.

Besides E and Graham I didn't really feel a lot for the characters, often finding myself feeling more sympathetic towards E than Marlena, but we may discover more in later installments.

I'm used to dystopias being quite dark but I wasn't expecting this one to be so brutal, especially with its treatment of the main characters. The use of colors and Pow! was magnificent and probably my favorite part of the story along with The Man. I play a lot of video games and for some reason this part kept reminding me of the reboot of Devil May Cry and the demon in the soda factory.

Overall I really enjoyed the ride though I have to sadly say that the end didn't really click with me, especially the reveal about Graham, still I really would love to get back to another City!

The final rating is 3.5 stars rounded up to a 4.

Orange City is about a man who was Selected to join a hidden city made up of convicts. There, he becomes a spineless and uninspired ad man who just watches as life passes him by. When he's given the task of trying out one of the ad company's products, some soda called Pow!, he gets thrown into circumstances bigger than his own.

I found this book quite interesting. It was great to see the same structure we currently have of people stuck in corporations and trying to survive or climb their way up. The books turns this situation into something a lot more risky and dangerous through black market drugs, fear of banishment into Empty Zones, and a totalitarian dictator called The Man. The concept of the soda was also very interesting, and I myself would like some Pow! available. The whole colours concept really makes me feel like this would do well as a film adaptation. Some indie art film, perhaps.

Unfortunately, that's really all the good I have to say about it. The worldbuilding was confusing to me, with the pacing and plot slipshod. I was also highly uncomfortable the way sexual relationships are portrayed on the page, with all of the sex having dubious consent at best. There's also the unsettling fact that the only non-white characters in this book, as far as I can tell, are involved in the porn industry.

Personally, I feel like I'm missing the point of the book, which could very much be my own fault.

Reading this book, I felt like I had been dropped into a conversation that had been going on for a very long time and I wasn't really sure what it was about or what was going on.
This story was way outside my normal thought process. It all eventually came together, kind of and there were good guys and bad guys. Some were both.
My head feels a little scrambled. I will have to give this more though. I could use a POW about now!

Thank you NetGalley and Lee Matthew Goldberg for the opportunity to read this book in advance of its publication.

Wife murderers, liquor store robbers, and parents of deformed children can get a second chance from The Man in a secret dystopian hidden city. A Joseph Stalin meets 1984 wet dream. If chosen, you get a new identity and the works as long as you conform and stay loyal. If you are disloyal, you get sent to the zones where your limbs will mysteriously disappear and die of hunger or dehydration.

The zones are starting to fill up and The Man needs to find a way to better control the population so rebrands a soda that makes you feel different moods and heightens colors depending on what flavor you drink. Instead of becoming a Sunset Overdrive monster, one man decides to fight back and kill the Slender Man looking ruler and fight for freedom.

Full of creepy weirdness and fever dreams, this is definitely one of the more unique urban dystopian stories out there.

Goldberg’s novel depicts the ever-present modern issue of human need versus corporate need, the ever-pressing question of just how far one is willing to climb the next rung of the company ladder. The story takes place in a dystopian America, following Graham Weathered, a spineless employee in an advertising agency in a hidden city filled with criminals and outcasts. Graham is given an opportunity to product test for a new client and jumps at the chance to get ahead. As he drinks this soda, he experiences shifts in his mood based on the flavour he’s consuming and becomes more paranoid as the testing continues. Eventually, Graham snaps and finds the secret behind the sodas, and its source goes straight to the top of the City. Graham must decide whether it can look the other way and accept the comfortable life the ‘Man; gave him, or tackle the issue head-on and take the master of the City down.

The book portrays an exciting concept of a city developed for rehabilitation in a dystopian America. The real reason for this place appears to be human testing, and people who don’t comply or perform as expected are discarded to the fringes of society and barely survive.

The feeling I got from reading this novel was how far we are willing to keep our place in the corporate structure. There are parallels from America’s heavily influenced business culture and how many are eager to sell their lives to companies and live in the moment and beyond our means once the ‘9 to 5’ drain is completed. It’s an interesting concept, or possibly even an alarming awakening, and worth a read.

Orange City is set in a dystopian future where the city and "The Man" provide criminals with a chance of redemption, as long as you do as your told! The citizens of Orange City are monitored 24/7 by cameras and sometimes other civilians. Graham is given his chance by becoming the new face of Pow! soda. Along the way discovering they are controlled by more than "The Man" and also his own life is/was not what it seems/seemed.

It’s been a wee bit since I delved in the world of urban dystopian fare, but Orange City delivers it in spades. Imagine Man in the High Tower (with a Stalin slant) mixed with Terry Gilliam’s Brazil and Max Barry’s Syrup. That’s pretty much what Mr. Goldberg deftly delivers in Orange City.

The basic premise of the book is that there is a huge secret city ruled by “The Man,” a seemingly monstrous oligarch who leads over the corporations and keeps the citizens working and cowering in fear of being cast out into the Empty Zones of the Outside World.

Everyone in the city has a role to play, and that is where our protagonist, Graham Weatherend comes into play. Graham was snatched to the city a decade ago to be put in the position of advertising executive. When his company gets the account for Pow! Sodas, everything starts to change for him: mostly chemically.

Mr. Goldberg finds a very unique voice and builds a terribly frightening world in Orange City, and I just could not get enough of it. The absurdity of this society under the fist of a potential madman combined with a seemingly endless supply of color themed entertainment venues with all of the decadent vices you can imagine really paints a fantastic picture of a “work, play, die” ethos.

This is a city where people go from the top floors of industry to being limblessly cast out onto the streets of the Zones in a matter of hours. A city where there is not even the precept of individual privacy.

I enjoyed Orange City because of the insanity of it. Page after page unveiled new facets of what I can only describe as mild terror. Much like Graham, I can’t wait for the next flavor.

Thank you to NetGalley for giving me an Advanced Reader Copy of this book.

This dystopian fiction has a really interesting concept - a secret city run by 'The Man' who controls everything, sees everything etc. The idea is interesting, particularly the idea with the limbs (keeping it spoiler free) but the ending was a bit flat. I felt it was escalating and then suddenly it finished. I know there's a sequel but I just didn't feel satisfied.

The main character wasn't too bad but I didn't feel a connection to anyone else in the story.

Orange City is a nightmare. The Man, a one-eyed, many-limbed tyrant, imposes his myopic vision of the society on a population of wholly dependents, casting those unable to perform into a half-life of misery and worse. Those who do perform might rise or fall depending on personal determination and achievement or on The Man's absolute whim. Add the newly-reformulated POW! sodas into this horrific cocktail, and you have a recipe for a novel about addiction (chemical, emotional, of media), about how societies organize themselves to retain power with the powerful, and about how those without power participate in their own enslavement. Which flavor would be your favorite? What justifications would allow it? What debasement would you permit? What would victory over these forces look like? Could you ever be sure you won?

We are told in the blurb to expect a mash up of Lost and 1984 but I’d go further, I’d bring in more contemporary comparisons such as Jeff Noons Vurt, William S Burroughs naked lunch (less contemporary but more apt I’d say) and the TV series The prisoner.

The author builds a dystopian world that is all to easy to believe, in this era of Trump and the pandemic it could be said that we are living in a dystopian future already and in Orange City we find a world we can recognise.

I found the book easy to read, compelling (we are supposed to say page turner...) it delights in its inventiveness and entertains as we share in the main characters spiral into madness and back again...maybe...

I’m very much looking forward to the sequel!

Lee Matthew Goldberg delivers great suspense and mystery in this new Sci-Fi thriller Orange City. Set in a dystopian future on an island ran by a mysterious multi-armed individual known only as "The Man". The island is mainly composed of those who have done wrong or committed crimes in the "Other-World" (or all life outside of their city island state). The Man sends his scouts to take them in after making them sign a contract to avoid years to sometimes life in prison.

Graham, our main character, encounters a run in with the law after committing a crime. He is approached in his waiting room by a few of The Man's scouts and the offer Graham his "four-leaf clover moment". He signs his contract and is on his way to his new life on thee island. Getting a decent job, he lives on the Island, early passing by, for 10 years. He is summoned into his bosses office and offered a last ditch proposal to maintain his position. All he has to do is taste some sodas, how hard can that be?

Well, these aren't just regular sodas, and Graham is sent onto a journey to uncover what is really going on on the Island, and just what sinister plans are in place, and just who may be pulling the strings.

A great thriller that I read all in one sitting. If you are a fan of dystopian futures and sci-fi, you will love "Orange City". Needless to say, I am extremely excited for "Lemonworld" to come out!

Orange City is imagination on each and every page, and an enjoyable dystopian story for those that enjoy the genre (like me). I enjoyed the pulp novel nature of the book, and would readily read another book by this author.

Like Orange soda, "Orange City" is something completely different. Move over Orwell. Move over Clockwork Orange. Move over Truman Show. Move over Timothy Leary. Orange city is the dystopian future where perhaps you get what you bargained for. Spend the rest of your life behind bars or in a purgatory on your way to paradise -- just doing a few odd jobs for the Man, who lives up in the Eye tower and wants his pilgrims guided to his secret island city. And on the way to paradise all it will cost is your immortal soul and perhaps more.

Moral dilemmas and Hobson's choices are not the end of it all. Because the heart of the book is about free will and manipulation and the choices that are slowly taken away from us. Madison Avenue can convince us to want anything, to buy anything, to become anything. It's almost like we can't stop ourselves.

At what point are we being manipulated and at what point are we knowingly choosing to conform to what's required by the corporation, by the twitter mob, by the dictates of those who dictate what's allowed to be said and what's allowed to be felt and experienced.

Orange City is an unusual book and it will take a little bit before you, the reader, get a feel for where things are going. Just remember the main character is probably even more lost and disoriented than you. In the end, Orange City is a rather satisfying read.