Story by: Eliza Victoria
VISPRINT
(4/5 ★★★★☆)
(Cover by Jap Mikel)
This is one of the three books that was launched by VISPRINT on Aklatan: The First All-Filipino Book Festival last year.
The story is set in the Philippines, mostly in Hagonoy, Bulacan. The country is seen to be in the period wherein technology has taken over our security. The SentryServ becomes the future Police Intelligence with the Sentry serving as the ground police enforcer who maintains peace and order round the clock.
The plot begins with Lilian temporarily working in the Dolores brothers' household as a summer job while school is off. She lands as a babysitter for Paul's brother, Caleb, who is suffering from a schizoaffective disorder. However, curiosity regarding her employers' background makes a shocking revelation. According to the records, her employers' name does not exist. It gets weirder as she discovers a different identity that her employers seem to previously have. Strangely those names are claimed to be already dead for more than 10 years. As several bodies related to Northpoint-Pascual ends up dead, more information about the brothers' identity surfaces. The story unravels itself in an amazingly fast pace that makes you want to run after Lilian as the truth unfolds.
This is the first time I've read a novel whose plot involves robots and drugs targeting schizoaffective disorder. As a medical student, the drugs mentioned in this novel suddenly made me think if any of these are really prescribed. Aside from those things, the writer included a nice way to tell some parts of the story. It was entertainingly done by using the twitter ID of known local news agencies. The events felt more realistic as twitter, currently one of the ways we use to check for news that occurs around us, was utilized. Twitter played a big part in the dissemination of information, like what happened during the Zamboanga siege, Visayan Earthquake, and Typhoon Yolanda / Haiyan.
This is another great book from VISPRINT. Aside from the nice story telling made by Eliza Victoria, one cannot ignore the illustrations made in each chapter and on the cover of the book. All these illustrations were made by Jap Mikel. Their combined work makes Project 17 a fun and an exhausting read that will surely set our imaginative adrenaline to rise up. Just be on the look out for any Girl X. She might be your final days companion.
More of the creator's works can be seen at:
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