I've never tried Tom Easton before, but when I was in London at the new branch of Foyles on Charing Cross Road and Seven Second Delay sat on the shelves in the Young Adult section of the shop, I picked it up and pledged to give it a try. A great move that was!
Seven Second Delay is all about Mila, an immigrant from the Eastern U who has come to the Isles, egged on by Julian back in the U, illegally. She's captured by the Agency on the Isles and they decide to give her a phone, a futuristic implant into your brain that doubles up as a smartphone, but also broadcasts your every move to the Net, the phone being the reason that CCTV cameras were abolished. Mila is taken to a secure facility in Kent, but when she tries to escape, they only aid her by bombing the Centre, allowing her to run up to the North. When Mila is eventually found again when she needs medical help in a hospital, she is told that she will never be in peace on the Isles, but ensures that she has a … light … conversation with the Minister before she leaves.
Seven Second Delay is a great novel, Easton's techniques forming a novel that is both fast-paced and pays attention to a brilliantly designed storyline, designed to thrill and leave you gripped until the end.
The end is where you reach a few problems though. Sadly, the end does not leave you on a cliffhanger, or if it was intended to leave you on one, it does a spectacularly bad job at it. Mila simply walks out the building in the end, and that's the end. A rather disappointing and anti-climactic ending. The story also has a rather delve-in start, which depending on the book, I sometimes like. This didn't prove to be one of those books.
Regardless of all of that, Seven Second Delay is definitely a book to be reckoned with, a thriller with extra pace and inventive characters included. I would definitely suggest you get down to a bookshop and demand a copy, despite the few flaws.
• Buy this book at the Guardian Bookshop
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