ABOUT THE BOOK
A satirical comedy featuring Christopher Columbus, a tech billionaire, and a global delusion. Mel Winterbourne is the founder of a small, single-issue charity in the obscure field of mapmaking. Its success in achieving modest aims attracts the attention of handsome tech billionaire Joey Talavera, who evicts Mel and hijacks her charity for his own ends: to convince the world that the earth is flat. Although his chances of doing so seem slim, Flat Earthery is an idea whose time has come. With the historical reputation of Christopher Columbus in free-fall, old-style ‘globularism’ becomes heretical for a new generation of angry, anti-Establishment free-thinkers. Teachers, politicians, and celebrities face ruin if they refuse to sign up to the new orthodoxy. For Mel, something must be done. Teaming up with a pariah tabloid journalist and a faded writer of gross-out movie comedies, she sets out to challenge Talavera and his deranged beliefs. Will history and the billionaire’s own family origins be their unexpected ally? Using his trademark mix of history and satire to poke fun at modern foibles, Simon Edge is at his razor-sharp best in a caper that may be much more relevant than you think.
PUBLISHED BY LIGHTNING BOOKS
PURCHASE LINKS
MY REVIEW
This was the perfect ‘light’ relief read that I needed in this crazy world we live in right now! Although it has now made me even more determined never to believe anything I read on the internet as it shows how easy it can be to peddle lies and misinform the public to suit your own needs!! Trust nobody!!!
Who knew a map making charity could be the start of misinformation?! Mel has been running the charity campaign for years and has achieved all that she set out to, so what next for the charity? Well, tech billionaire Joey has a few ideas of his own and wants to use the campaign to help him spread his latest beliefs.. mainly that the earth is flat!! And when you have as much money as he has, there seems to be no limit in how far he’ll go to convince people of his way of thinking!!
This is a master class of showing how shallow the online world can be! The ‘sheeple’ following others if it’s the latest in thing to do, in fear of being left out and thinking for yourself!!
Mel got richly rewarded for her charity work and to hand over the reigns to the new charges, but it soon starts to play on her mind that all she had worked for over the years is being derided so she starts to put things in motion to get the truth out there about the new aims of her once respected charity.
I just loved how relevant this story is!! The use of ‘word salad’ to bamboozle people and get them onboard and how the use of social media just ramps the anger and vitriol up! The twitter spats especially were very funny and very believable!! How something so trivial can be turned into full scale war online when a few people get behind it! And the backlash against those who dare to go against the grain – and use their common sense and brains to denounce it all! And knowing a billionaire is behind it all, money talks!!
This was a fabulously crafted piece of work, so biting and pertinent and thoroughly entertaining from the first page to last!! The humour is pitch perfect and I can’t wait to see what the author comes with up next!!
★★★★★
My thanks to Dan at Eye/Lightning Books for the advanced reader copy in return for a fair and honest review
Books and Me! 
Fantastic review! sounds like it would go very well Outraged that I’m reading at the moment! xx
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thank you! Haha! Yes it would!! xx
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