Marlon Renner finds himself working for a private unique company, Atlas Analytica, for the enigmatic Mr LaFontaine. The companyuses social manipulation and thought ideas to drive ideas and themes in swaying public opinion without their realisation. Then the company is asked todrive turmoil in Greece to try and split it from the EU. Marlon’s journey takes him from Africa to Europe as he finds himself delving further into thegrey areas of barely legal methods of carrying out his work.

There are two sides two this story, Marlon’s journey and the glimpse at some of the methods companies do use to carry out wholescale populacemanipulation. There are plenty of interesting things going on, but they all happen behind the scenes and you get the feeling there is a great story ifit concentrated on the other in the group. It is set in the modern day, following closely to modern events, and you do wonder if there what you haveseen and heard in the media ws impacted by the actions of companies like Atlas given the sudden emergence of companies liked Cambridge Analytica inthe news.

However Marlon is not a great character and he is more drawn from situation to situation as much pushed around as the people whose works he affects.The writing is descriptive but drags on with the events and I kept waiting for something to happen that was of interest instead of just finding thingsout at the snail’s pace that Marlon does. I found myself waiting for something interesting to happen, but it always seemed to come back as a reportlater on.

But ultimately, the story centers around Marlon and his views on what happened. As a lot more of these companies are bought to light, this story willhave some resonance, but is likely to age badly as the world moves on. Definitely, a story for its time, perhaps for those who know nothing about howthe underlying media message in the world can be altered to push your ideas in a specific direction.

The right story with the wrong protagonist.