Assessment:
Plot: Day’s novel boasts perfectly executed time-skips, plotting, and a narrative that is both haunting and unrelentingly optimistic.
Prose/Style: The prose here is meticulously crafted, switching between lovely and haunting with ease. Dialogue and speeches breathe life to bartender Joe Carlton’s strength and complexity.
Originality: The Patriot’s Grill is a suspenseful, engrossing tale that features all the traditional hallmarks of the dystopian genre while remaining unequivocally optimistic about human nature and the power of change, setting the novel apart.
Character Development/Execution: The characters in Day’s The Patriot’s Grill are complex and convincing. Readers will find Joe Carlton’s simultaneous stalwart conviction and fear-fueled anxiety both relatable and realistic. Secondary characters are essential to the narrative and breathe life into a bleak futuristic world.
Blurb: A suspenseful dystopian novel that at once gives readers a frightening look at a futuristic America ravaged by climate change, constant surveillance, and dictatorship while nevertheless remaining unrelentingly optimistic, shining a beacon of hope amid an all-too-possible future.
Date Submitted: June 21, 2021