reviews_and_ramblings | A Dish Served Cold by Andrew Ashling

A Dish Served Cold is not an easy story to like at the beginning above all since its main character Andrew comes out like a spoiled little brat despite being almost raped in the first chapter. So, spoiled little brat plus rape and I think most of the readers would be scared out from this book… and they would be probably wrong.

Now, it’s not that Andrew is really a bad guy, it’s only than indeed he is a rich kid without a trouble in his life; even when he comes out to his family and friends he has it easy, basically his mother tells him she already knew and his best friend, and crush, Sean is so kind to tell him that, if he will ever need “something” he is there to help, and no, it was not a double-entendre but the real generous words of a kid that will prove to be a good friend.

Actually this novel is a little bit an “opposite” cinderfellas: Andrew’s mother remarries with a not so nice man who brings living with them two sons; on the contrary of the most famous step-sisters, Dan and Davey are not plotting together against their stepbrother, but instead Andrew becomes almost a protector of little Davey. Unfortunately Andrew’s golden existence crushes down when his mother dies leaving him in the care of his stepfather, who of course has not Andrew’s best interest in mind.

The novel is set in an undefined near future, a totalitarian society where endured workers (a nicer name for slaves) is again an ordinary event. Problem is that the reprimanding for violent act has become a normal expedient for people to “eliminate” undesirable people, and ending a slave is even too easy.

As I said Andrew is not exactly a nice boy, but in the end he is not the villain; even when he should have reason to react with violence, he is able to see the reason behind another man action (see his reaction to the rape attempt) and only when his life, and that of the people he loves, are threatened, only then he will arrive to extreme actions, only to expiate for them in his own way soon after that. Andrew is not a saint, don’t get me wrong, but sometime the best people arrive from the worst experiences.

There are only two points I’m not sure I completely liked: the sex something was even too graphic, and all the descriptions related to the enduring processes too detailed, above all when they were regarding people not directly involved in the story. Even if Andrew gives hope again to a lot of people, still I was sad for who he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, help.

Another point that made me think was that maybe these young men were “too” young to act as they did. 15, 17, barely 18, all the main characters of this story are teenager, some of them young “adult”, but for sure not grown men, and they didn’t act like that, aside maybe for Sean, Andrew’s best friend. Even Davey, with his taking care of their new-born stepbrother, was more like a child playing home with a doll. But then this is not our reality, this is sometime in the future and moreover is the life of a privileged part of society; so what is normal for me can be not the same for them.

Amazon Kindle: A Dish Served Cold
Publisher: Ormidon Publishing; 1 edition (October 31, 2010)

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