Oasis: What's the Story

Product Information

The premise is that they live in Oasis. The Earth has been destroyed due to the rapidly advancing technology that society could not keep up with and has become The Goo, a jello like terrain that does not look appetizing at all. The people in Oasis are the only survivors and have found a better way to live thanks to nanocytes.

Lastly, and most importantly, the ending was completely unpredictable. When a story is too predictable, it obviously takes away the excitement and suspense. The book presents you with various, typical sci-fi twists and intersecting storylines. At first, it seems confusing and takes a little time to follow, but it’s worth it because when the story ends, everything comes together. Who were these people? As I observed my friends, I could barely recognize them. Or maybe they were like this all along, their true natures merely were hidden by the excesses of Western civilization, only showing through now, in this extreme situation of life and death. Content warnings (general): mention/descriptions of blood and injury, turbulence, mentions of bullying, mentions of violent behavior, smoking, swearing, physical & verbal fighting, mentions of divorce, mentions of racism and racist micro-aggressions, experience of injury/strain, dehydration, drinking alcoholThough it was all done on gut, feeling and instinct, it never failed to be anything less than effortlessly commercial. The band went to extraordinary lengths to pay justice to their fans, just as these fans go to extraordinary lengths to re-pay this justice to the band. In one of it’s most impressive sections, the ‘Gigography’ pinpoints the many gigs, locations and theatres Oasis played.

First and foremost, to save you some time wondering if you aren’t familiar with Mesopotamian mythology, (like I wasn’t before reading this), this story surrounds the Tablet of Destinies. The Tablet of Destinies a.k.a. Dup Shimati, in summation, gives the one who holds it the power to rule the universe. As you can imagine, an item containing that much power would cause some problems. There is nothing that annoys me more in a book than awful writing. I can handle some plot holes, too tidy endings, inconsistent characters but bad writing will kill me. For this one, the bad writing combined with ridiculous plot combined with annoying characters all made me hate it. I felt like it was written by a teenager trying way too hard to make their writing interesting and in the process, making much of it pointless and overdone. There were so many similes and foreshadowing and phrasing that were just weird. A few random examples: The people are considered "Youths" until they're 40? So you're telling me everyone acts like a child until they're miraculously enlightened? And I'm assuming they don't die or they live until they're ridiculously old? I stg nothing makes sense in this book.Whoa! This was awesome! Even if i felt like i had sand in every nook and cranny when i finished. Lol!

The secondary characters add to the overall ambience of the dystopian story, creating a sense of exclusion as experienced by the protagonist. Luke - Oh how I loathed Luke. Luke is the kinda guy who thinks he deserves whatever he wants, just because he wants it really bad. WRONG. Take your ego and your entitlement and your ASSHOLERY out into the desert and keep walking until you crumble into the nothingness you really are. In the tradition of The Twilight Zone or Tales Of the Unexpected, De Becerra skillfully presents the reader with the known world with its laws of nature, time and space then carefully bends reality, drawing you inexorably deeper into a narrative both terrifying and irresistible. Tense, electric storytelling that makes you wonder what you would be willing to sacrifice to have your deepest longings fulfilled. In a dystopian/post-apocalyptic society known as Oasis we meet Theo. Theo is a twenty-three year old that thinks he is going crazy as he's begun to hear a voice in his head who calls herself Phoe. Theo thinks that Phoe is a figment of his imagination but she knows things that Theo himself couldn't possibly know. I felt like the ending of the book gave us a lot of answers that we were looking for, while leaving us completely confused. Main point of confusion for me – Why Theo? What about Theo himself is actually special? In the end, it didn’t feel like there was anything really that special about Theo. It boiled down to more of a right time, right place kind of situation that led Theo to being the “hero” of the book. I just don’t know what I think about my heroes being chosen simply by chance. It left me a little disconnected from him – especially since in the end, he’s a 23 year old man with the mental capacity of a 16 year old boy (literally… I had to keep reminding myself that he was 23 because he was written as a 16 year old teenager). While I understand that that was part of the way that the society was set up, so that people didn’t reach their actual adulthood until the age of 40, it still doesn’t make sense that they were able to keep people’s innate makeup so suppressed that they were acting years younger than their actual age. It was very disconcerting for a large portion of the book.

I absolutely loved the glittering and lush imagery that Katya provided throughout the whole book, but especially those relating to the oasis – they were just absolutely stunning. And, really, these beautiful descriptions just made it even more unsettling when truths about the oasis were revealed. One thing that I find amazing in regards to her writing is Katya’s ability to evoke such strong feelings; even when things were all hunky-dory, there were little aspects of her writing that made me feel nervous and unsettled. I was second-guessing everything.

Linguistically, these words come from Mesopotamian folklore. It has something to do with control over destiny. Or was it control over the universe? Tommy - Yeahhhh alright it didn't take me long to warm up to him. Strong silent type here. Totally dreamy. Also, the chapters end in awkward and sometimes jarring ways. It's confusing, because often it's in the middle of a scene, and then the next chapter continues the exact same scene, which makes it a strange time for a chapter break, in my opinion. I would understand if there was more than one POV character and we were switching from one perspective to another within the scene, but this is all from Alif's perspective, so it really made no sense.Tommy was completely yummy, and he and Alif were trying their hardest to figure out what was going on and how to get home. I didn’t feel as invested in the others, but the things that would happen between everybody was interesting. But i felt mostly invested in Tommy and Alif, and what was happening between them and also to them. Alif drops poisonous berries in their source of fresh water on the oasis, which we're supposed to believe taints the water. First, I'm not sure that's how that would work. I mean, I don't actually KNOW how that would work, but unless they'd been smashed and dropped in the water...also, just handling them made Alif's fingers go numb, but they're able to drink the water again a couple hours later, no problem? The end was something I kind of expected, and while I like where it ended up in concept, again, I felt like the execution just wasn't there. I wonder what would've happened with this idea in the hands of another writer, and still think it has potential. And I'm probably going to be in the minority, so maybe it's just a me problem. I did like that it's an open ending.