Insignia

I have recently finished the second book of the Insignia trilogy, Vortex by S.J Kincaid. These books got me so hyped up I got into trouble because I kept giggling when I was reading them when I should have gone to bed but I couldn’t help it there were so addicted even Veronica Roth said so on the first book cover page. These books were the first of the sci-fi genre books I started this school year and I will do more sci-fi genre for the foreseeable future. But what I really want to say on these books is that I really enjoyed them.              

What I surely liked about these books is the main character, because he is such a messed up kid who doesn’t really belong in that time period his in. That is because Tom, the main character isn’t exactly sane he has major violent and psychopathic impulses. I don’t mean he is a kind of psychopath that burns ants and mutilate puppies. Tom is a berserker he enjoys war games and winning them like how most boys are in these day in age. Ok backtracking right now let’s first talk about the setting he is in, Tom is from the not so distant future where World War 3 is happening right now. About at these moment you are asking yourself on why I am saying that this berserker doesn’t belong a wide spread war well that is because it’s being in space by drones controlled in space. And how is Tom involved in theses WW3 when he is 15 years old kid.  Well the American government needs his talented video game skills to work on the drone for the war to win as well his viciousness that he use to win any scenario.

                When Tom gets recruited he doesn’t get the mandated psych test because honestly the general who scouted him didn’t believe he would pass much to the denial of Tom. He’s vicious nature doesn’t really show until later in the book when the other young recruits are in a war simulation with holographic bodies. But when the pain nullifiers shut down and everyone is feeling the pain being simulated instead of signing off like everyone does Tom stays and fights the enemies who hacked on the simulation. He successfully kills most of the real enemy hackers until he faces off with Medusa the best of the other side. What Tom say next really cracks me up because when Medusa asks why he didn’t run away like the others Tom says he wanted to fight with Medusa and that he was obsessed with Medusa in a really creepy and stalkerish way .Unfortunately he died but he was still so happy to fight with Medusa. Another crazy thing he does in the second book was when he was in a simulation with his team his weak and insecure team leader put in a simulation where he and his teammates are in a raft simulating feeling dehydration and insane hunger as they faces of the other team who were simulated into sharks and they had to kill each other. Tom came up with the idea to kill up with the team leader because he want joining with the others in the simulation instead he pops in and check once in a while. So he does kill the team leader and feeds him to the shark as bates so he and the others can kill the sharks. It would have worked if he wasn’t pulled out of the simulation. But his actions was insubordinate as well as malicious but as Tom argues it was a simulation and the whole point of the simulation was to win but the pain receptors were on so there team leader felt dying so yeah…..

                Those were two of my favorite parts of those two books and they really made me laugh. The real reason why I really like Tom is his personality, because I am one of those villain empathizers so antiheroes or heroes with seriously dark personality really appeal to me. Main characters with heroes complex or high morals sometimes bore me I really into heroes who have terrible, horrible but honest personalities.