With temperatures and unemployment rising, one American company is striving. Cloud. Each MotherCloud is a city, a huge warehouse with accommodation, food, healthcare and entertainment for its thousands of employees. There’s no reason to leave. You’re lucky to get a job there.

Cloud is quite clearly based an Amazon and some of the dubious working practices that have come out in recent years. Employees live on site, have strict quotas to fill, are searched leaving the warehouse to make sure they don’t steal, and they are underpaid, of course. They work long hours and risk their safety, just to keep their star ratings and calling in sick has penalties. Their every move is tracked by their CloudBands.

Stay hydrated. Hit your numbers. Don’t complain. If you get hurt, walk it off. The less you have to talk to the managers, the better. Don’t even SAY the word union.

Paxton is an ex-prison guard who doesn’t want to work security…but that’s the job he’s assigned at Cloud. His business (some egg gadget that wasn’t very convincing) was driven under by Cloud, but now his one time competitor is his only option. He’s put on a special task force to get to the bottom of the Oblivion problem, how’s the drug getting in and who’s involved? He meets another new recruit, Zinnia, a corporate spy, on a mission to steal Cloud’s secrets.

It’s a bit cheesy in places and the characters are a little cliched. Zinnia’s “tough guy” persona was a bit much (she’s beautiful and clever too). It tries to address sexual harassment but I think having it happen to Zinnia was the wrong move. She’s calculated, rather than afraid. Yes, she doesn’t want to lose the job at Cloud because of her other job, but she’s not put in a position of desperation. She manages to get revenge rather than justice.

Cloud isn’t just a place to work. It’s a place to live. And when you’re here, you’ll never want to leave.

The blog posts from Cloud founder, Gibson Wells, show how his vision of the company differs from the reality of working there. He believes he is a philanthropist, helping to save the world. He has kept people in jobs, when automation was looming, but at what cost? He’s also a multi-billionaire in a world with increasing inequality.

What is never explained is who is buying all the stuff? Apparently jobs are hard to come by outside of Cloud, even teachers are being laid off. The delivery drones mean they’re not just selling products internally and a lot of things are non-essentials. So who were the customers?

There were other things that would be easy to pick holes in if you start thinking about them, however it was an entertaining thriller, with some quite valid points to make about monopolies.

ATY Rejects: Related to Monopoly

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Book Source: Purchased