Pepper black – Anton Bearsley

Story

Pepper black is a twelve year old boy. He was born inside the bunker which his father had created to protect his family from the fast deteriorating earth’s climate.

All he has known is life inside the bunker.

But Pepper has always been curious about outside. How would the earth look like? What would he see there? Would the environment be as bad as his family says? These are the questions that he wants to be answered.

And then one day his dad,David, decides to go outside. And then everything changes.

Why did David wanted to go outside? 


What happened next? 


Was Pepper able to see the earth?

My Views:

Pepper black is a novella by Anton Bearsley. The story is told by Pepper who is a twelve year old boy. Pepper was born in the bunker and so we see things from his point of view. We get to see how his family came to live here, how he fits in the situation and what are they planning to do next and each of this is told to the reader by Pepper.

I liked the premise of the book. As people we have been exploiting earth’s resources and if we are not going to change our ways the world depicted in this novella could be our future.

The characters feel real. I liked the way the family life was depicted.

The book also has an AI called Clive. Clive is an important character in the book and his interactions with Pepper are fun to read. It was interesting to see how the AI’s strengths and short comings were portrayed. I think since we already have an AI like Alexa with us so it’s not farfetched to imagine that a thing like Clive would be availabe to people in a next couple of years. It would be cool to have it.

Since book is narrated by Pepper and thus most of the time it feels like you are reading his diary. This in turns sometimes makes the book a little bit boring. We get to read about the chores that they are doing, their history and the system they have created among themselves which helps them live there in harmony. I found this part sometimes a little bit tiring to read as i didn’t have an incentive to keep on reading. I was waiting for something exciting to happen but nothing did atleast in the first half of the book. I think these descriptions could have been reduced or these could have been interpersed with glimpses of world outside the bunker. This would have helped in creating a contrast between the world outside and a little bubble this family has created for themselves which in turn would have helped in maintaing the interest of the reader till the last half of the book.

Talking of last half,I really enjoyed it. It is where most of the action takes place. It’s thrilling albeit sad.  It gives you a glimpse of what the world has come to. I wish the author would have shown more of upper world and how things worked there. It had intrigued me. I would have enjoyed reading about that more.

So all in all, i have mixed feelings about this book. It was slightly above average read for me. I found the first half to be stretched a bit too much but i really enjoyed the second part of the book. If you like dystopian fiction then you can give this short read a try.

Rating : 2.25/5

If you have read this book then do tell me what did you thought of it? 

If you haven’t read this then you can get it from the following links:

Kindle

© विकास नैनवाल ‘अंजान’