What a pleasant surprise this turned out to be. I went into this with (pun alert) virtually no expectations. Never heard of the author, who seems to specialize in series as much as I specialize in saying away from series. Don’t particularly care for gaming stories, Ready Player One is hugely overrated. Even the title is somewhat cheesy. But then...I do like dystopias. And in this story the future belongs to psychos. And it isn’t even really all that much about gaming, it provides the framework for the novel (alternating chapters of a radical virtual reality game design), but the real story here is the psychos and those around them, all tangentially and then directly interconnected to each other and to the game. And, while at first the connections are tougher to realize, in the end it all comes together very nicely, creating a cohesive nightmarish ode to psychos as the only genuinely free individuals, their freedom being one of the ability to do as they wish without guilt, fear or inhibitions. There’s a machine in the novel that tests the subjects and labels them P or NP accordingly and much fascinating debate about rights and ethics such tests imply. And then as one might expect from such a story, there are some appalling scenes, starting off with pure psychological manipulation and ending up with strikingly grotesque brutality (the Aimee story to its conclusion). All in all I was impressed by this book, it was very well written and cleverly constructed, and while the future most likely belongs to the stupid (since they are the ones reproducing most diligently), it was fascinating to behold the imaginary world where the psychos take over. Very nice find. Any fan of intellectually stimulating dark speculative fiction would probably enjoy this one. Thanks Netgalley.

I have just finshed reading “Psychotopia,” an excellent novel from the prolific R. N. Morris.
I was deeply absorbed, and often disturbed by the world that the author describes so brilliantly. Indeed, it may be a little too close to home: a society of psychopaths, each taking what he/she fancies from life with no sense of the pain it may cause others. Does it ring a bell? Individuals hooked on iphones, obsessed with video games, wanting to go ‘viral’ on the Mind Net with an instant snap, the soundtrack in their ear-pods blocking out any sense of community?
Morris plays deftly with this disturbing fantasy – is it real, or is it a virtual reality game?
There’s little comfort in his vision of what might be lurking just around the corner.
Clever, but bleak, with razor-sharp prose, and dark humour to die for.
Five stars!

Thanks to Severn House for the opportunity to preview the novel.

Psychotopia is based on the premise that psychopaths have become a larger part of the population and are wreaking havoc. The story is told through several different points of view. One point of view is a detective, one is of a woman who was a victim of a charming psychopath, and another is a psychopathic man hiring a woman at a video game company. There are gameplay notes peppered in between that describe a video game where psychopaths roam around.

The premise for this book has everything I should enjoy- psychology, psychopaths, video games, the horror thriller genre. I wanted to love this book, but instead merely tolerated it. It was intriguing enough to make me want to know the ending, and the writing is fairly good. The way the content was framed within the story was what I found unsatisfactory.

At first, the message the book was trying to convey was unclear. Did the video game cause an uptick of psychopaths? Are these people playing the game? Are they even real? So many questions, and even at the 45% mark, there were no answers. Maybe this is meta and the book itself is the uncaring psychopath. I felt uncomfortable trying to pinpoint the underlying, political message.

When the Dr. Arbus psychopath detector conference portion ended, there was an ill fitting sex scene, then suddenly Dr. Arbus is back at the hotel, talking about his psychopath detector with the detective again. It was disorienting.

About that sex scene... it was poorly written, and slightly anachronistic, which felt forced between two sections of plot that shouldn’t have been interrupted. I was cringing, and not in a creepy horror way, but in a, “my eyes are rolling so hard that I might get a migraine,” way. The whole, “she fucked like a man,” trope from male authors is old and stale. Did she put on a silicone penis and peg him? No? Then clearly she didn’t “fuck like a man.” Women enjoy sex and by middle age, usually take responsibility for their own orgasms. Giving normal, healthy sexual attitudes a gender bias is problematic. As I am so tired of this type of thinking, I reject it.

Overall, enjoyable, unsettling, and full of psychopaths. I look forward to reading this author’s future books. He used the slang word, ‘grotty,’ a cutesy shortening of the word ‘grotesque,’ which I have barely heard since middle school, and it took me back in a wave of nostalgia.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free copy of this ebook in exchange for an unbiased review.

Is it a computer game or a tool for determining which individuals need psychiatric help? Dr. Arbus’s “game” allows users to create their own psychopath and then set them loose on the virtual world to earn point and advance to new levels and new challenges. Are there any “normal” people” left in a society obsessed with celebrity, violence and hatred? Morris’s book is a look into the increasingly dark psyche of the 21st century human. Not for the faint of heart or those needing a spiritual lift, but a creepy and fascinating story all the same