Katsoulis’s second volume expands on the themes of All Rights Reserved, moving from a dystopia where the rich oppress the poor to one in which the specific indentities of race, culture, gender and other factors color the experience of oppression.
The world of Access Restricted hints at the future of American exceptionalism: a basket-case nation whose perverse and polymorphous (and manifestly unjust) laws are used to impose American will on the world, even as they strangle American prosperity and freedom, isolating the country and squandering the potential of its people.
It’s a fantastic, red-blooded justice-struggle novel, where the liberation of slave plantations, plans to blow up giant, oppressive data-centers, hacking, running, rock-throwing and karate-kicks live alongside nefarious surgeries that implant tracking and communications devices in indentured slaves, Judge-Dredd-style kangaroo courts are the scene of nailbiting battles and clever schemes, and where death is always a possibility and solidarity is the only answer.
Access Restricted [Gregory Scott Katsoulis/Harlequin Teen]