The Rise of the Pawns

The apparent two pawns are David Churchill and Juli Dixon, two students approaching adulthood at the age of twenty-five. It is the late twenty-first century, where the State of Britland is the major power within the Northern Hemisphere Alliance. The masses endure living in austerity for the benefit of humankind as it recovers from a near apocalyptic event, decades earlier. Juli and David meet again on their commute to their final exams. While David is confident of excelling in the exams, Juli is worried because of her academic inadequacies. They agree to meet after the exams but both are catapulted into their new roles immediately after receiving their results. David embarks to a position in the ministry, while Juli is placed with Senior Minister, Evania Brown. David enters the multi-layered world of those who control society, only to find ever more layers of corruption and deceit. Juli discovers to her horror, she is to be trained as a softener to cajole important businessmen to agree to new government conditions by way of entertaining them through the giving of ultimate pleasure. David finds his talents are used by those above him and discovers the unpalatable truth of the deceptions and lies fed to the masses. He becomes embroiled in the power struggles for a vacancy in the highest rank of the ministry, but discovers the government is struggling to control the masses. He is encouraged to join a rebel group and mount a revolution to remove the government, where he meets up with Juli again. The rebellion is brutally squashed and David discovers he was used as a pawn to eliminate the rebel population. After an unexpected twist, David is reunited with Juli, only to be drawn further into the labyrinth of plotting and deception between rival members of the ministry. Further terrible truths emerge from the shadows, but David and Juli form a plan to expose the corruption to the common people. As they make some progress towards their aims, other more sinister individuals creep out from the upper layers of hierarchy to further complicate their plans. As the layers of complexity grow, they are uncertain who they can trust, who is lying or truthful and what facts are real. With endless twists through multiple layers, this novel slides towards a disturbing conclusion. D. H. Rosenberg.