The Regional Office Is Under Attack!

Gonzales, Manuel. The Regional Office Is Under Attack!. New York: Riverhead. 2016. Print.

First Sentences:

If you were wealthy, but extremely so, and you were in the market for a lavish adventurous getaway, one that might require the retainer of Sherpas -- in the event that you came across a mountain you wished to scale -- as well as a hot-air balloon and balloon crew in case, well, that came up, too, the desire, if you will, to hot-air-balloon over the glacial formations off the southern coast of Chile, then you could hardly do better than to contact the staff at the Morrison World Travel Concern. 

Description:

Sometimes you just need a book that is fun, distracting, unexpected, and completely off the wall. Welcome to Manuel Gonzales' The Regional Office Is Under Attack!

The Morrison World Travel Concern is an ultra-exclusive travel agency in the future which is ready to arrange your most wildly-imagined, exotic vacation experience for the very rich. But what is the Regional Office of this travel agency and why is such a harmless business under attack, you might ask? 

For that answer, you need to take their elevator one mile below street level of the Morrison World Travel Concern to the real operation of the Regional Office. The inscription that greets you as the elevator doors open reads:

The Regional Office: uniquely positioned to Empower and Strengthen otherwise troubled or at-risk Young Women to act as a Barrier of last report between the survival of the planet and the amassing Forces of Darkness that Threaten, at nearly every turn, to Destroy It.

The Regional Office actually is the organization that recruits young women to stand as protection for the world against the forces of evil in the world. This Regional Office is run by two people, Oyemi and Mr. Niles. Together they gather visionary Oracles to identify the aforementioned evil forces of the world that need to be thwarted as well as point out ordinary women who should be recruited by the Regional Office to carry out the vital, world-preserving work. 

Huh? Confused yet? And I didn't even mention the Operatives, the woman with the mechanical fighting arm, the kidnapped mother, the kindly recruiter, and the unknown forces who have been extensively trained to bring down the Regional Office for unknown reasons. 

It's a wild trip, told in non-chronological order by a variety of narrators who reveal only a few of their thoughts and motivations. To "clarify" the situation, the book quotes reports taken from a documentary report: titled, The Regional Office Is Under Attack: Tracking the Rise and Fall of an American Institution.

The outrageous people and actions of The Regional Office Is Under Attack! are calmly described by author Gonzales, who cleverly makes this strange futuristic world seem somehow reasonable and believable, pulling even skeptical readers into this chaotic future world of normal and unusual characters.

Maybe this book isn't for everyone. But if you are looking for something completely different than anything else you have read, cleverly told, and unexpectedly satisfying at the end, then give it a try. After the first few pages, you won't be able to stop yourself from reading more, whether to wallow in the interesting story or just to gather more information about this wild, wild world.

Happy reading. 

Fred

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