It’s funny that before reading ‘Brand Loyalty’ I could never have imagined myself having a point of view worth making known in writing on very much anything. And now that I should write this and dare have a view on greats like Orwell and Huxley astounds me. How things change?
‘Brand Loyalty’ does that to you. It changes your perceptions on so many things that at one time you almost accepted as ‘fact’ or were inclined to accept as ‘fact’ because it is far easier doing that than thinking. Probably a bit of the ostrich in my makeup? But as things are by the looks of it and after the debacle of Indy and Brexit I’m in quite good company there as regards ‘not thinking’ though in both cases my ‘not thinking’ differed from the other ‘not thinkers’ .
Before I go on perhaps I should give you a quote from the author:-
‘Remember reality is what you choose to believe and life is how you create it.’
That quote fits in throughout any part of the book and becomes a steady mantra in the background. The characters are in their perceived reality but have no choice over how they should or indeed could create life as we at this moment take for granted. That is changing though as social media slowly and inexorably takes control of our everyday freedom of movement and even thought. The author shows this by giving us a glimpse into a future that is coming closer by the minute. A future of total control once the realm of science fiction that is now nearing our total reality.
The author takes you the reader on a journey in thought in such a way that you find yourself ‘thinking,’ and in my case actually pausing to think on what I had just read. The style is modern and the way the words are used just flow from one point to the next as the author leads you through this not far into the future world where control is all and the brand is ultimate. Perhaps I shouldn’t say ‘lead’ that is unfair to the author because that sounds a bit like ‘drag’ as if you are being forced against your will to look. This book is nothing like that. Indeed the author keeps right out of the book and allows you the reader to be the author and you conjure up images from the symbols on the pages that you decipher into understanding as you pass through.
When I started reading ‘Brand Loyalty’ and within say the first fifteen or twenty pages I started taking notes, but that wouldn’t last long as I soon realised I was reading something completely different from what I was used to. So instead I just read the book more or less as a very well written novel. Of course with many pauses as I’d ask the author sometimes out loud ‘How did you think of that?’ or simply re-reading a passage because I liked the flow of the words and the meanings they conveyed.
By the time I was coming to the end I started counting the pages thinking ‘It’s coming to an end and I don’t want that!’ Though this may sound crazy I never read the last few pages then. In that I think if memory serves I lasted perhaps a week before I finished the book. I’m not giving anything away here but one of the characters I fell a little in love with near the beginning figures very much at the end.
‘Brand Loyalty’ is a haunting book that sticks in your memory so much so that I read it again a few weeks later. This time though it read quite differently because the first read was only an apprenticeship. If you read this book then it’s quite alright to finish it as an apprentice and leave it at that. But if you want to become a journeyman it’s only in the second reading you are given the trade secrets.
It’s a book of layers where each sentence can show you a quantum world of pure thought and the thought you thought was your thought wasn’t your thought at all but the thought the symbols on the page encouraged to you think so the thought you thought you thought was your thought ends it wasn’t really your thought at all but is a generic thought that is within us all that only needs awakening.
That’s the quantum world where nothing is as it seems at first glance. Indeed the very act of glancing into the world of quanta changes its structure and is much like our thought processes which are chaotic at best and little more than particles inside this particle accelerator we call our brain.
A real new world has been opened in this book but the world isn’t new at all it has always been there since we went ‘ugh’ and hit one another with clubs as a basic control technique. The world of ‘control’ has just come of age since the time the priest/minister spied for the Laird who then passed on titbits to the King who then sent out club wielding armoured Sir ughs to subdue the plebeian ughs if they had ideas above their station. The only thing that is new is the Ultimate Controlling Techniques called ‘cybers’ that has fallen into the laps of the modern day club wielders like manna from heaven and who incidentally still use ‘Ugh’ as their normal form of verbal communication. Watch the B.B.C news if in doubt.
In some ways I find myself hankering for the days before the new cyber ugh club. At least then you could defend against the physical swinging club by either getting below it and in close or running from it. Now though the cyber club is everywhere and there is no real defense against it. Or is there? Read ‘Brand Loyalty’ and collect a toolkit of knowledge in readiness for the next phase which is ‘Big Data’. Perhaps our author has spotted a way to defend against the ‘cybers?’
Cally Phillips, author :-
“You know I’ve always believed we live in two places. In the moment
and in the memory. But we are only truly free in one place,
and that is the mind.”
Pat Hutchison.
You can read many of Pat's short stories FREE at McStorytellers and at the Sanners Gow site.
But if you fancy putting your hand in your pocket (all profits go to charity) here's the links
Sanners Gow Tales and Folklore of the Buchan £9.99 paperback (Unco - also available Amazon)
or Ebook £2.99 (Unco, also available Amazon)
And you can pick up a FREE digital copy of Brand Loyalty from UNCO (today only) HERE
Or a signed paperback copy for just £6.99 HERE