Book Review: The Price of Safety by Michael C. Bland

• Title: The Price of Safety
• Series: Yes – the first of a planned trilogy
• Author: Michael C. Bland
• Publisher & Release: World Castle Publishing – April, 2020
• Length: 331 pages
• Rate & Recommend: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⚡ Yes!

Thank you so much to Books Forward PR for my copy of The Price of Safety by Michael C. Bland.  I received a free copy in exchange for an honest review and all opinions are my own.

This is a sci-fi thriller and I can solidly recommend it to fans of either genre.  Also the book deserves a huge congrats for being an Indie Book Awards finalist in both genres as well!!

Here is the description from GoodReads:

By 2047, no crime in the U.S. goes unsolved. No wrongdoing goes unseen. When Dray Quintero learns his 19-year-old daughter Raven committed a heinous act, he covers it up to save her life. This pits him against the police he’s respected since he was a child and places him in the crosshairs of Kieran, a ruthless federal Agent. To survive, Dray must overcome the surveillance system he helped build and the technology implanted in the brains and eyes of the citizens.

Forced to turn to a domestic terrorist group to protect his family, Dray soon realizes the sheer level of control of his adversaries. Hunted and betrayed, with time running out, will Dray choose his family or the near-perfect society he helped create?

The government has us wired. Neural nets track our data and deceive our minds. There are cameras in our eyes, and crime is practically nonexistent. Or is it? The government is controlling every aspect of life and the engineer who helped create it all is now on the wrong side of the law. How can Dray escape the cameras and keep his family intact after a brutal crime sets them on the run?

The book has everything from futuristic medicine to technologically enhanced Agents to machine gun battles, and many harrowing escapes. The last half was so incredibly hard to put down as the action just never stopped.  It was almost a brain-overload at times as one huge wild scene after another played out.  I can’t wait for the second book!

I liked Dray and the girls too.  He is trying to keep his family together and there is a battle of wills between him and his teenaged daughters that will have parents smiling to themselves at times for sure.  I am not a parent but there is a lot of thought provoking content related to protecting one’s children, and the future of technology, social media, and medicine (yay!) in general.

I would 100% gladly recommend The Price of Safety to any fans of sci fi, thrillers, and even family adventures.  Between dark matter powered flying motorbikes and a mother’s torment over losing a ‘perfect’ life, there is truly something for everyone here.

About the author:

MICHAEL C. BLAND: Michael is a founding member and the secretary of BookPod: an invitation-only, online group of professional writers. He pens the monthly BookPod newsletter where he celebrates the success of their members, which include award-winning writers, filmmakers, journalists, and bestselling authors. One of Michael’s short stories, “Elizabeth,” won Honorable Mention in the Writer’s Digest 2015 Popular Fiction Awards contest. Three short stories he edited have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Another was adapted into an award-winning film. Michael also had three superhero-themed poems published in The Daily Palette. He currently lives in Denver with his wife Janelle and their dog Nobu. His novel, The Price of Safety, is the first in a planned trilogy. For more information about Michael’s life and work, visit www.mcbland.com.