Book Review: Deprivers

Reviewed By: Harriet Klausner

Deprivers     Amazon US PB Amazon Canada PB
Steven-Elliot Altman
Class/Genre:   Science Fiction
Ace Dec 2003 $13.00, 368 pp.

He turned a handicap into a high paying career as an assassin for hire. Robert Luxley has a “talent” that allows him to paralyze a person with one touch for fifteen minutes, enabling him to make a clean kill. He doesn’t know that there are others like him suffering sensory deprivation syndrome (SDS) until he meets Cassandra. She too is a Depriver who wants his help finding her twin brother Nicholas, kidnapped by a radical group of Deprivers.

While Cassie’s brother is in captivity, he learns that the government is on the verge of discovering them and outing them to the general public. The extremists, led by Governor Tynsdale, want federal laws mandating that Deprivers register and wear gloves at all times. When Nicholas breaks free of his confinement he meets Cassie and their underground group at their New Jersey house. They and other deprivers fly to Holland to announce their existence before the government can put their own spin on SDS.

DEPRIVERS is a raw, compelling and thought-provoking work of science fiction that leaves readers very unsettled because they project the official treatment of Deprivers onto what has happened to groups in post 9/11 society. The audience will believe that the government will stereotype all Deprivers into one group, spun as dangerous and thus rationalize second class citizenship. There are many heroes in this book who use whatever weapons at hand to diffuse tensions and hostilities between Deprivers and normals.

Harriet Klausner

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Harriet Klausner