Finalist, 2021 International Book Awards – Science Fiction
What if you made the worst mistake of your life and got the chance to fix it? Only you made it so much worse? From the incomparable crafter of nine cross-genre works of fiction, Lisa de Nikolits expands her horizons to pen a grab- you-by-the-throat, feminist speculative-fiction thriller in the style of Groundhog Day meets The Matrix.
The perfect father kills his family on Christmas Eve, and tries to undo his actions by jumping back in time. The result is murder and mayhem in dystopia. Set in 2055, the world is run by robots and virtual data, while the weather is controlled by satellite dishes. Arts and culture are no more than distant memories. People are angry, placated by prescribed visits to rage rooms to vent their boredom, fury, and discontent. Beneath the sunny skies and behind the garbage-free suburban McMansions live deeply disturbed, materialistic families.
During his time travels and increasingly desperate attempts to reserve his colossal mistake, Sharps Barkley meets the leader of the Eden Collective, a feminist army determined to save the Earth by removing all artificial intelligence and letting the Earth restore itself—if necessary, at the expense of mankind. The Eden Collective uses data gathered from the rage rooms to analyze and predict the potential and actions needed for the Earth to reset and they need to prove that time travel is an effective tool. If Sharps can go back and save his children, then there is hope for the future. Sharps is the 49th experiment and his success is pivotal. Can love prevail over anger?
The Rage Room has a multi-layered plot that is fueled by a feminist-driven courage to take charge and save the world as it exposes the effects of an increasingly digital age on our lives and, ultimately, our humanity.
“In her latest captivating book, Lisa de Nikolits proffers not only a roller coaster of entertainment, but also, sharp political commentary in complicated times. The Rage Room is an intricately woven dystopian world, rich in strong female characters who easily whisk readers to a world of futuristic follies. Move over George Orwell—De Nikolits shows us how the future can be scary, exciting, and above all, female.”
—Kelly S. Thompson, national bestselling author of Girls Need Not Apply: Field Notes from the Forces
“Wow, what a ride! Lisa de Nikolits has written a pulse-pounding thriller set in a troubled future that might just be ours. We see the seeds of The Rage Room in our own digital landscape. Mind-bending yet all too believable in the hands of a masterful storyteller.”
—Terry Fallis, two-time winner of the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour
“If dystopian speculative fiction is your thing, with the enticement of time travel, you won’t go wrong with The Rage Room. The world de Nikolits has built is utterly fascinating, and quite horrific, yet believable. I sympathized with the main character, even though he is flawed, but that makes the story even more interesting. What a ride! The plot ratchets up like a train speeding down the tracks out of control. Gripping tension, and at the same time, highly complex, with multiple time travel redos and memories overlapping. I found that fascinating. I was absolutely riveted, and pleased to see that it ends with the hint of more books to come.”
—Melodie Campbell, award-winning author of The Goddaughter series
“In turns unsettling and very funny, The Rage Room is a berserk science-fiction satire of toxic masculinity, narrated by your guide, Sharps, the neurotic, rage-filled Jason Bateman of the future. There are lines and descriptions that will stop you dead in your tracks and make you take notes.”
— Evan Munday, author of The Dead Kid Detective Agency series
“We’ve all wanted to go back to the past to fix the future – but Sharps has messed things up so much in his own high- tech future-world that he has to do it. Lisa de Nikolits takes us – and him – on a wild, high-octane ride into other times and places so bizarre, blighted, funny and wise that they just might seem chillingly familiar. She turns time travel on its proverbial ear and you won’t want to get out of the passenger seat until the last page.”
—Catherine Dunphy, author of Morgentaler, A Difficult Hero
“Why would one go back in time? To make things right, of course. But every time Sharps visits his past, things change in ways he can’t control, and he keeps changing from a worrier to a warrior. I loved all the witty characters, and original, daring twists in this genuine reality fiction beyond imagination!”
—Suzana Tratnik, author of Games with Greta
“Dark, fun, weird, imaginative, The Rage Room is a dystopic ride perfect for the anxieties and conditions of the present day. The paranoia of Sharps Barkley seeps into you, propelling this thriller that will keep you guessing to the very end.”
—David Albertyn, author of Undercard
“With The Rage Room, Lisa de Nikolits takes a deep dive into dystopia. Prepare to be alternately chilled and thrilled as the hapless hero journeys backwards and forwards in time in his increasingly desperate attempts to right his terrible wrongs, and to find some sense in his rapidly disintegrating world.”
—Lorna Poplak, author of Drop Dead: A Horrible History of Hanging in Canada
“Leave it to the wild imagination of Lisa De Nikolits to bring us the dystopian future of The Rage Room, an extraordinarily inventive speculative fiction thriller with a decidedly feminist bent. Fast-paced, funny, bold, and completely engrossing, The Rage Room is an allegory, a cautionary tale, and a rollicking good read that will stay with you long after the last page has been turned.”
—Amy Jones, author of We’re All in This Together and Every Little Piece of Me
“The Rage Room is a hugely intriguing, intense and provocative exploration … an untangling of sorts … a measuring of societal coded messages … a scouring type of scrutiny …beckoning us… calling for curious changes of perception.”
—Shirley McDaniels, Artist
Going Underground
We’re here,” Norman finally said and we slumped down on the ground in relief.
“My feet are killing me,” Shasta said and she pulled off her shoes. Her feet were a mashed-up pulp of blood and ooze.
“Why didn’t you say?” Knox looked ready to cry. “I would have carried you. Norman, this is ridiculous.”
But Norman wasn’t listening. He was inserting a huge old-fashioned key into a massive oak tree and we watched, open-mouthed, as he swung the tree half open, revealing a small elevator.
“Can we all fit?” Knox asked. “I get claustrophobia. Can I go down first or after you guys? We can’t fit.”
This was a first, something Knox and I had in common. I hated the thought too.
“We all have to go together,” Norman said and Shasta looked doubtful. She peered into curved out tree. “It’s not real,” she said, stroking the tree.
“Of course it’s not real,” Norman said. “Listen, we can’t leave the door open much longer, a security breach will sound. Get it or don’t.”
“Permethrin,” Norman said. “Bug spray. It was a regular feature on airlines back in the last century. It was approved by the who but people objected and they eventually stopped using it. But Janaelle likes us to be cootie-free although, as you will see, the process has only just begun.”
“How much longer?” Knox asked and he was beginning to hyperventilate. Shasta pulled him close and whispered to him, but his body language stayed taut and he was shaking. He was sweating like a pig and despite the bug spray, his stench filled the small space. Four bodies in need of a shower and a few bars of lye soap.
The door opened and we spilled out like wound-up sardines sprung from a can. We sprawled on the floor, gasping for breath. I sat up first, rubbing my eyes and the others followed suit. We were greeted by a robot who regarded us impassively.
“Follow me,” he barked electronically and we got to our feet. Shasta grabbed Knox’s hand and hung on tight. The robot looked like a titanium Terry’s Chocolate Orange, its petals neatly folded inwards with triangular panels forming a base. It looked like a moving flower or a petalled sea crab with two bright blue stalk-eyes sticking off his ball head, eyes that seemed strangely expressive. I swear the thing even blinked.
“It’s a Roundabout, modelled on a MorphHex, first made by Kare Halvorsen,” Norman said. “Cute though, isn’t he? I somehow think it’s a he.”
Shasta nodded, her eyes wide. “You’re crushing my hand,” Knox said and she loosened her grip but pressed closer to him.
“I didn’t imagine it would be this futuristic,” she whispered. “Or this underground. Are you okay?”
Knox nodded although he didn’t look convinced. “Trying not to think about it,” he said.
The Roundabout led us into a room and without warning, a door slammed shut, locking us in. Knox slammed his hand against the door and quickly discovered it was steel. I could see Knox was about to lose it; he was nano-seconds away from screaming and pounding the door when giant sunflower-shaped shower heads dropped from the ceiling and the room filled with steam and hot spray.
“Cleansing cycle initiated!” the Roundabout announced, volume high. “Remove outer garments now! Remove outer garments now!”
“Take your clothes off,” Norman yelled. “And close your eyes. This won’t hurt! Stand still!”
“I’m not getting undressed,” Shasta shouted and she screamed as the Roundabout raised itself up to six feet tall on spindly legs, extended spider arms and ripped her clothes off. Its eyes didn’t look that friendly anymore.
I kept wiping my eyes and trying to sneak glances at what was happening. We were covered with pale green shaving cream that smelled like cedar and pine with a touch of Old Spice, still a bestselling male fragrance. I figured out why the scent was familiar, it was like the after-rinse detergent at the rage rooms. Where were we? I was sure that was no coincidence.Was this a government-sponsored initiative? But Norman had said these were biohackers, geeks.
“Rub your bodies,” the Roundabout announced, disturbing my thoughts. “Rub your bodies.”
We did as he said, motivated I guess, by fear that if we didn’t, it would.
“Cleaning cycle complete, rinse cycle initiated. Rub bodies to remove excess residue from cleansing cycle.” Caught under the steaming waterfall force of the rinse cycle, I welcomed the opportunity to rinse every pore.
The water stopped abruptly and panels extended from the wall, offering stacks of thick white towels, neatly-folded track pants, a hoodie, and a t-shirt, white slippers, and an additional small metal tray with toiletries.
Shasta pulled on the clothes while she was still wet.
“Where did our old clothes go?” Knox asked. “I was kinda fond of those jeans, man. It’s really hard to get good jeans these days. And that hoodie, I got it on the set of an ad with an Ansel Elgort cover version and he even signed it. It’s worn off, but still. And my shoes man, NikesNewCentury. I can’t afford to replace them. And this shit,” he tugged at his white garb, “makes me look like a mental patient.”
“You’ll get them back,” Norman said. “Shasta, you’ll get replicas. You guys need to relax. This is a safe place. Janaelle’s just got a thing for clean.”
“Where did the water go?” I asked and Norman pointed to the edges of the room. “Drains. So cool, right? Shall we move on?”
The door had opened without us noticing and the Roundabout, reduced to its former ball size, rolled along like a ball-bearing.
We passed an enormous warehouse lab with floor-to-ceiling windows and technicians in white suits studying computers. I stopped and stared. “Norman,” I said evenly, clenching my fists as my side and barely stopping myself from pounding the shit out of him, “you’ve got some explaining to do.”
I was looking at a massive ball suspended in the centre of the room. The ball was at least the size of four station bubble cars and it rotated slowly. The surface was a matrix of edge-to-edge angled screens, like a dragonfly’s eyes. The whole thing looked a peeled pomegranate, enough to make a trypophobe run screaming, but that wasn’t why I was glaring at Norman. It was the content on the screens. Each screen showed a rage room, with a man or woman, hitting or screaming and or smashing things. Hundreds of rage rooms.
I stared at Norman and he studied his fingernails and gnawed at the edge of this thumb. “That’s The Eye. Janaelle will explain everything,” he said, walking away and I had no choice but to follow him.
We heard a strange noise, a gurgling sound and we all looked around, including Norman.
“My stomach,” Knox apologized, “I’m hungry.”
“We’re here,” Norman said.
The Roundabout stopped at a glass door, extended a bony steel finger, and the door opened.
“You said you were hungry?” Norman asked Knox and he gestured to a long mahogany dining room table with full crystal place settings, complete with place cards and starched napkins shaped like swans.
“Janaelle loves swans,” Norman said and he found his name card and sat down. “Let’s eat.”
“You’ve forgotten something, little brother,” a voice rang out into the room, a deep, husky, lounge-room voice. “Naughty boy. What did you forget?”
“To say grace,” Norman looked shamefaced. He held out his hands. “Come on, hold hands, and don’t argue.”
We all grabbed each other’s hands.
“Dear Humankind, we have thus far failed you. We have failed you with our greed, our selfish preoccupations, our lust, and our laziness. There is only one Creator and Her Name is Truth, and we shall set Her free. Namaste.”
Inanna Admin –
The Rage Room by Lisa de Nikolits
reviewed by The Faerie Review – November 2020
Silver Dagger Book Tour
https://www.thefaeriereview.com/2020/11/tour-rage-room/
The Rage Room is eerie and creepy and just not quite right. Yet it’s so easy to imagine it being part of our (maybe not so distant) future. Add in some time-travel and a group of women determined to save and heal the earth and you have the perfect recipe for a chilling, gripping story that you won’t want to put down. A must-read for any fan of the dystopian genre.
Inanna Admin –
The Rage Room 5 Star Review by Lisa de Nikolits
reviewed by Westveil Publishing – November 2020
Silver Dagger Book Tour
https://www.westveilpublishing.com/?p=3525
Set (mostly) in the not too distant future of 2055, Sharps Barkley lives in a world where an Orwellian overlord named Minnie controls everything, access to the internet has been revoked and replaced with interconnected brain implants, hobbyist horticulture and live pet ownership are crimes, and the weather is scheduled. Oh, and everyone takes out their anger and frustration in scheduled sessions at rage rooms where they’re free to destroy what they wish until the clock runs out. Sharps is a salesman, making his living selling the latest crap through your brain implants and always saying yes to his boss and father in law. On the outside he’s handsome and powerful. On the inside? He’s a trembling, neurotic ball of fear and anxiety. The powerful women in his life seem to be pushing for a return to a natural world. His addict wife wants more babies she isn’t fit to care for. Enter time travel, attempts to fix and reset the world, and the decision that his family is better off dead.
The Rage Room is a wild ride that held me hostage and kept me turning pages until I had finished in a single day. It’s a little bit 1984, a little bit Farenheit 451, just a hint of Psycho, and a whole lot of cyberpunk dystopian thriller of its own unique flavour.
I hated the man Sharps pretends to be and immediately loved and pittied the broken shadow of a man he actually is on the inside. I couldn’t help but notice that he shares a surname with a neuroticly fearful and holo-addicted lieutenant in Star Trek: The Next Generation, and I think I caught some Trek references here and there, so I sincerely hope the name was intentionally chosen as an easter egg for us Trekkies.
In the beginning, as Sharps is struggling to return to work after his year long paternity leave following the birth of his first child, I found it intriguing, oddly encouraging, and at the same time uncomfortable to read a overblown version of the post-partum anxiety experience I’m familiar with, but in the father while the mother goes about her sugar baby addict life without a care in the world. I knew from that early stage that this book would be full of feminist speculation and criticism of our world, and I was so ready for it.
My one complaint is that I really, truly did not need such a complete play by play of conceiving the children. Yes it’s a mockery of the babymaker role turned on its head, but I could have done with being left to my own imagination a little more.
All in all this is a great, riveting story that writers of the past like Swift and Orwell would be proud of, but with the sort feminist spin a cis man could never write, and the techno-horror only imaginable by someone living in the 21st century.
Inanna Admin –
The Rage Room by Lisa de Nikolits
reviewed by Quiet Fury Books – December 2020
Silver Dagger Book Tour
http://quietfurybooks.com/new-release-spotlight-and-review-the-rage-room-by-lisa-de-nikolits/
The Rage Room is gently mocking, uniquely insightful political and social commentary wrapped up in one of the most creative speculative fiction stories I’ve ever read.
This story is a study in contrasts: dark humor and intense misery, absurd and plausible, satirical and serious, bleak and hopeful. Then a twist that gave me a figurative slap, as if to say, “Were you paying attention?”
Lisa de Nikolits has a gift for stripping characters to their core and showing us their truth.
Humanity’s history shows us that we’re great at running full speed toward things we want but terrible about slowing down to avoid future destruction, especially if it means inconveniencing ourselves in the present. The Rage Room’s dystopian take on our (too) near future will leave you with lots to think about, while keeping you thoroughly entertained.
Inanna Admin –
The Rage Room by Lisa de Nikolits
reviewed by Fran Lewis, Just Reviews – December 2020
Silver Dagger Book Tour
https://tillie49.wordpress.com/2020/12/08/rage-room/
Rage: at one time everyone feels that desire to let it all out and just smash, yell and scream your frustrations out. What is you had the chance to do just that in a setting that was created for everyone to vent, yell and get it all out? What if you had your own Rage Room?
The Rage Room starts with Sharps breaking and smashing everything in site until his time is up? Mistakes are made and he wants to go back in time to rethink his choices and fix it. But sometimes what you want is not what you get. The narrator for this book is Sharps Barkley who seems bent on having things his own way. A world that is not like ours today that is run by robots, consumerism, a strange form of religion and virtual data. Imagine food grown in labs and the weather controlled by satellites. The arts and culture are banned, and snow and rain have their place when the leader of their world, Millie says so along with her Mama. People live in free suburban McMansions and are deeply disturbed, concerned about material things and prescribed visits are given to rage rooms in order for the population to vent, scream, and get rid of anger caused by boredom, unhappiness, discontent and band aid fix that hide what the government has put in place.
Feminist hackers hope to restore Mother Nature since plants are banned and having one can get you deleted. The year is 2055 and things are different and the government is run by one person: Millie and of course her Mama as Sharps takes us on many journeys but first we get to learn about his life, his job, his friendship with Jazza, the wife he despises, the mother who sets him aside and wants him out of her life and his two children that suffer as a result.
As we get to know Sharps and the events that led him to destruction and taking things into his own hands, we realize that he does something that will haunt and change his direction in life but why relive it?
Going back in time Sharps is riddled with rules, medicines, apps and things embedded in his mind, brain and body as he goes back to where it happened in the past and has to find some permanent release in the future.
Sharps is a pawn in an elaborate scheme to find out just what happens when a person is used and experimented with drugs, implants, thoughts, mind control and manipulated into thinking that events happened when they might not have. Anger is what fuels him and the truths he thinks are just what he is programmed to think. Going back and forth from the past to the future nothing takes hold, things go wrong, on his own in a high-tech future world that author Lisa de Nikolitis created. Why would anyone go back in time? Can he really fix his mistakes? The year is 2055 and the world is not the same as it has been taken over by Minnie. Everyone has implants, owning a pet is a crime, he is a salesman fearing going back to work and his anxiety issues take over in every situation throughout the novel. Manipulated, pitting him against those he thought cared for him, just who can he trust, what was real, what was created for him to believe?
Going back in time he had a team that he thought was there to protect him: Sting Ray Bob, Janelle/aka Noelle, his mother, Doctor Harvarth and events that would send shockwaves through him when the harsh realities were revealed. time travel was just a hypothesis that Minnie squashed but the doctor and his mother came across a largely redacted time travel hypothesis and had to get it out. He was their subject? He was their guinea pig, but his friend Jazza’s mother was the victim. Can you manipulate and create environments? Just what was implanted in the teeth that everyone had and what difficulties were faced when his own mother implanted and placed software in them which would upload a single individual’s life. False relationships, people recruited in his life to make him feel loved. A mother who had one purpose in mind that will shock you and him in the end? Kindnesses that manipulated situations, murders that he thought he committed did he really?
How would you like it if your life were on someone’s radar and your events and whole life tracked? The world is at war and the microchips placed will help to know where a person is, their mental and emotional status and physical status too getting ready for WWIII. How does Sharps react when his own mother tells him he helped them with what they were doing, increased their insights into human frailty, expectations, vulnerability and how all of those immeasurable and yet unavoidable elements make or break the practical application of a hypothesis. They also learned what affects your memories, fears of one person will affect his perception of a given event and how that might differ from what really happened. He succeeded and you will not believe what he endured each time he goes back and forth in time. When all is said and done he is sent back to a world that is filthy, unsensitized and wondering if he were being sent home to his family and what he would find when he got there. But not all endings are what Sharps or you the reader would hope for or expect. Images that might be just virtually created, what was real, whose emotional attachments were provided and created to manipulate his feelings? Did he experience different timelines or was it really one with different iterations? Where does he wind up? Who really loves him? What is his destination? Sometimes what you expect is what you really wanted and yet was it? Did he get to go home? Was his wife alive? What about Jazza? What happened to Sharps? Would you like to live in the world that Lisa created? Would you like to let out your anger, break things and rid yourself of anything that harbors within you? If so take the trips back and forth in time with Sharps and enter at your own risk and : Welcome you are now in THE RAGE ROOM! Break Away!
Inanna Admin –
The Rage Room by Lisa de Nikolits
reviewed by Book Review Crew – December 2020
Silver Dagger Book Tour
https://thebookreviewcrew.com/blog-tour-review-the-rage-room/
The Rage Room is an interesting read centered around a “perfect” world that has seemingly gone too far in the quest for perfection. Controlling every aspect of peoples lives, Sharp finds himself in quite a situation and tries to see if he can break the cycle that is taking place in this “new world”. This story gave me vibes of black mirror and the Lorax with the perfect atmosphere that you immediately feel is all wrong. Sadly Sharp didn’t get the chance to go back and try to fix his errors until half way through the book, I certainly could have enjoyed more of this part of the story as well as the female characters who don’t really shine until the end. I’m left curious about the details of the she warriors and their journey. The writing style was unique and very modern, this being a dark and twisted story I found the casual modern approach in the writing, with text speech, some cursing and slang made the story feel more warm and friendly. The Rage Room is a dark sci-fi novel with a lot of interesting themes.
Inanna Admin –
The Rage Room by Lisa de Nikolits
reviewed by Quirky Cat’s Fat Stacks – December 2020
Silver Dagger Book Tour
https://quirkycatsfatstacks.com/2020/12/14/blog-tour-review-the-rage-room-by-lisa-de-nikolits/
Lisa de Nikolits’ newest novel, The Rage Room, is an impassioned feminist and dystopian fiction, one that is alarming familiar in tone to that of 1984.
Do-overs. It’s a concept we’ve all dreamed about. The chance to fix our mistakes. Both the minor and the major concerns of our past. Yet it’s also a fictional concept, that is, until Sharps messed up big time – and got the opportunity of his life.
He’s been given the rare chance to go back in time and fixed the wrongs he’s made. Not all of them, to be sure. But certainly the biggest mistakes of his life. Actions that he normally never could have taken back.
Sharp’s journey may sound like a dream come true, but the complexity of the situation is quickly made apparent, all while raising ethical and moral debates left and right.
“I couldn’t let my little guy smell the fear on me. I had to get a grip on things.”
The Rage Room is an intriguing and dark piece of work, let me tell you that much. This is not a novel you pick up for the bubblies, and that’s okay. It hits on many similar notes to that of 1984, but with a significantly stronger leaning towards feminist goals and ideology.
For that reason alone, it truly was fascinating to read. I’ll confess that it’s pretty difficult to like Sharps, but then again, I’m not certain that we’re supposed to. He’s merely a pawn in this dystopian world – one who has so much less control than he thought. It’s alarming and thought-provoking, all in one. That’s why I found myself unable to look away, eagerly seeking what next consequence there would be popping up into Sharp’s life.
The Rage Room is marketed as a cross between Groundhog Day and The Matrix, both of which are accurate comparisons. I’d like to throw one more into the mix: The Future of Another Timeline. In both instances, the author sought to raise important and difficult conversations through the use of time travel and so much more.
Lisa de Nikolits’ novel defies genres, as it merges dystopian, feminist fiction, science fiction, and thriller elements all into one. It’s chilling and darling, and it will leave an impression on the minds of its readers.
Inanna Admin –
The Rage Room by Lisa de Nikolits
reviewed by Books Chatter – December 2020
Silver Dagger Book Tour
https://bookschatter.blogspot.com/2020/12/rv-rage.html
The Rage Room is the tenth novel by Lisa de Nikolits and my first taste of her work. I am not sure I have ever read something quite like this; it’s a dark satirical dystopian technological sci-fi thriller which provides us with an unsettling glimpse into a future our society might be hurtling towards.
Narrated in the first person by anti-hero Sharps Barkley, we are vividly transported into a not-so-distant future where nature, culture and art are no-more and illegal; everything is controlled by a female religious supreme ruler using artificial intelligence (AI). Consumerism rules, and beyond the shiny super-technological bubbles enjoyed by the rich, lie compounds full of the lower layers of undesirables. Free-thinking is in short supply and virtual digital reality abounds. As do the rage rooms: a safe environment where people can vent their frustrations.
All of the societal elements presented by Nikolits (including the rage rooms) are based on our own present reality; the values portrayed can easily be identified in our own society which make her dystopian world so real and disturbing. The step is truly small. And, as in all societies, different forces are at play.
The Rage Room is Sharps Barkley’s journey, as he finds himself an unwitting pawn in a much larger plan. He is deeply flawed, as are all of the characters we encounter – without exception – but, by the end of his venture, full of revelations and growth, I found myself understanding him and sympathising with him.
The pace is relentless with head-spinning twists that hit you just when you thought you had things figured out. More often than not, the narrative is complex as everything is different from what we know and there is a lot of technology involved, therefore it can be difficult to keep up with it. But then I don’t think we are supposed to; just as our narrator is struggling, I believe we are supposed to struggle with it all. Be prepared to be dazzled by many terms, from locations renamed using names of saints, to various types of plastics, drugs, products and mind-boggling explanations of futuristic technology, including time travel. At times I truly felt like a rabbit in the headlights.
Be aware that, although the novel opens with a hint at time travel, this doesn’t actually come into play until half-way into the story, and Sharps’s first visit to the past does not take place until the 55% mark. The Rage Room is about a dystopian futuristic society, and time travel plays a part in it. As I devoured the pages, I had flashes of several films, such as American Psycho (for our Sharps), Demolition Man (for The Sacred Board and their health and safety rules), Dredd (for the living situation of the undesirables, the Blowflies), 1984 (as your actions are never just your own), Total Recall (the theme of memory and manipulation of reality), as well as Back to the Future, High Rise and The Matrix.
The book deals with murder (including of children), suicide, sex, various types of abuse, deceit and contains bad language, however, I never felt that any of it was over-descriptive, or excessive. I also want to reiterate that, although witty and humorous, this is a dark tale, with a strong feminist undertone. Nikolits also makes references to our popular culture of the last few decades.
Undefinable, intelligent, topical and multifaceted, The Rage Room will stay with you for a long time. I know I want to read it again to see if I can pick up nuances I missed the first time around.
Inanna Admin –
The Rage Room by Lisa de Nikolits
reviewed by James Fisher
The Miramichi Reader – December 2020
https://miramichireader.ca/2020/12/the-rage-room-by-lisa-de-nikolits/
Toronto author Lisa de Nikotis writes some very good and very imaginative novels. Her latest, The Rage Room is a dystopian novel set in 2055 in a world that is controlled by a woman named Minnie. Capitalism reigns. Consumerism is rampant, for everything including the weather is controlled, so people have little to do but work and shop. The natural world has been all but eradicated and replaced by imitation pants and trees. There are apps to make your physical appearance more pleasing. Almost everything is fake. Minnie has endorsed the use of “Rage Rooms” where people can blow off steam in a safe, controlled environment. Our protagonist, Sharps Barkley is a true Mr. Angry and a regular in the rooms.
Mother looked at me and shook her head. “….you’re the perfect anger machine. I don’t know why, Sharps, but your fundamental, instinctive, feral rage is a rare thing. There are some things that even science can’t explain.”
The pinprick of her words deflated me. Yes. That was me: Mr. Angry. From the cradle to the grave.
Other than his unaccounted for rage, Sharps has everything going for him: a high-paying and secure position at Integratron, married to the boss’ daughter Celeste (who, among other things, is a recovering alcoholic, and spends more time off the wagon than on), Baxter, his young son, and his work partner Jazza Frings who comes up with great marketing ideas for the team. Yet, Sharps is not happy. Coming off paternal leave and having to go back to the working world has him depressed and anxious. The day before he returns, he meets with Jazza and learns some disturbing news that makes Sharps all the more distressed about work.
His whole world is about to go pear-shaped.
At this point in the novel, Sharps is introduced to an underground matriarchal movement wanting to overthrow Minnie and bring nature back. And it involves time travel, which they have been experimenting with. This presents Sharps with the possibility of travelling back in time to right a lot of wrongs he has just committed in real-time. Instead of setting things right, though, he commits more blunders and he gets a glimpse of a world with all control removed. It’s not pretty.
The Rage Room contains passing references to the destruction of the environment, colonialism, class distinction, consumer capitalism and other ills of society that we face today. It also contains Ms. de Nikolits’ trademark humour with lines such as:
Dragging myself out of bed was harder than dragging a horse’s head across a row of parked cars, the nightmare from which I had awakened.
“The inside of your brain looked like a snow globe on acid and speed.”
Consumerism was still our god. all we did was shop, eat, and sleep – the new Holy Trinity.
“I feel like we’re all so confused here. Like a bunch of deja vu moments are cross-pollinating and making crazy patterns in my mind.”
I believe that The Rage Room is Lisa de Nikolits’ best novel yet. She has managed to maintain a stable locus of control over the entire story and the result is a very satisfying read. I would like to state that the editing is extremely solid, which serves to make The Rage Room the type of book that is tough to put down. Personally, I find any book (or movie) with a time travel theme boggles my mind and Sharps interferes with so many timelines that it’s difficult to keep following the consequences of his actions (or inaction, in one case). Nevertheless, The Rage Room has much to say about the present world, the near future and the de-evolution of humankind.
Dr. Donna M. Decker –
THE RAGE ROOM (2020) by fellow Inanna author Lisa de Nikolits is a dystopia ripe with the realities of our time. Set in 2055, the author takes up male rage and gives us Rage Rooms where ferociously-atavistic men can break things and “get out” their anger. Meanwhile, can these rooms provide information that can help an army of feminist hackers to return the world to its “natural” state – one where there is vegetation and thriving humans and a non-plastic/non-computerized state of being and an eschewing of a pathological patriarchal system? Though it may not sound like a fictional world where humor can exist, it sure does. The narrator, Sharps Barkley, is both funny and irreverent and infuriating. The reader walks his walk with him (perhaps because de Nikolits calls him a Jason Bateman!) until he does the unthinkable and must time travel back to undo what he’s so brutally wrought. This is Orwell for our time, and it is rendered by an author seemingly as existentially exhausted by male rage and patriarchy as many of her readers are. READ this one. Do it for Inanna Publications, a feminist press. Do it for hope. Do it for those waking up. THANK YOU, Lisa de Nikolits. THANK YOU.
Inanna Admin –
The Rage Room by Lisa de Nikolits
reviewed by Rosie Oliver
SFcrowsnest – February 19, 2021
https://www.sfcrowsnest.info/the-rage-room-by-lisa-de-nikolitis-book-review/
Sharps Barkley grew up angry and remains angry. We first meet him the rage room venting his anger by smashing up everything to hand. He cannot face going back to work the following day after a year off on paternity, leaving his addict spendthrift wife Celeste in charge of his son, Baxter. Divorcing her is not an option neither. She is the daughter of a board member of the firm he works for and had gained his promotion because she fell in love with him long enough to marry him.
If sacked, he would become one of the scum ‘Blowflies’, the unemployed who live off state hand-outs in old ‘highrise condos’ and are shunned by the workers. Then what will happen to Baxter?
Sharps also has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), a natural consequence of his anger. Everything must be clean and in its place. But he will have to back to work with Jazza, who secretly wears ladies’ underwear and illegally owns real live fur babies (animals) that make his apartment a germophobe’s nightmare. Jazza provides the ideas that Sharps can sell on the Crystal Path, which is the internet using brain implants. They make a productive team and have to work together, but there was no way Sharps is letting him anywhere near Baxter. This hurts Jazza.
Sharps will also have to deal with his immediate boss, Ava, who will resort to any means to get what she wants. She has designs on taking the world over from Minnie, the AI that controls the world. Minnie, who took control of the weather, exchanged farming for food production from labs and bioreactors and introduced rage rooms.
It is not surprising that Sharps heads for a meltdown and ends up killing Celeste, his by then two children and his mother and ends up being framed for fraud and murders he did not commit.
Sharps regrets killing his children. He is offered a chance to go back in time to stop his children being killed. There are consequences. For one, he ends up realising that he had totally missed what was really going on during his first pass through that time. For another, he ends up changing to course of events with dire consequences.
The strength of this novel is the way it peels back layer upon layer of what is really going on the consumerist-orientated dystopia. The clues are all there in the first part that leads to Sharps murdering his children. So there are no cheats going on for the reader.
The weakness is that there are details of the world-building that I find unbelievable. For example, the Vatican, Minnie’s mainframe that stores everyone’s info, is ‘miles and miles of hard drives—bigger, in total, than the size of… Texas’. There are just not enough rare earth elements on our planet to produce a computer that size. Another example is the use of fields as they need cultivation and yet farming in the traditional ways has been stopped. They do not affect the overall story, but they are annoying.
The Rage Room is for an adult readership and has underlying political messages. These include the dangers of over-reliance on AIs to sort our problems out, the devastating effects of hyper-consumerism and what can happen if there is stratum of society that is pushed to one side. This novel follows in the footsteps of the likes of ‘Brave New World’ and ‘1984’, but is applicable to our time.