iBoy by Kevin Brooks

“we’re all … animals - none of us know any better”

iBoy by Kevin Brooks is the story of a teenage boy who acquires ‘superpowers’. When someone throws an iPhone from the top of a 30 story building, Harvey’s head is cracked and the iPhone pieces get stuck inside his brain. Harvey is able to everything that a phone can do and much more. He seeks revenge on the gang members who hurt his childhood friend, Lucy. He becomes known as iBoy, a superhero protecting the violent local area. But in all of that, Harvey loses himself to iBoy as the line between good and bad starts to blur.

After reading How to be Invisible, I simply assumed that this would be another book for pre-teens. However, this book contains some heavy themes and should be read by younger adolescents. (Maybe 15 and up? It really just depends on maturity…)

I found the whole idea of the phone-human hybrid so interesting and original. It really is relevant to today’s world. Harvey, in the end, gave up on the idea of using his ‘powers’ but to be honest, I would find it so cool. It’d be like having google glasses but inside your head – you’d never have to memorise anything and you’d never forget your phone. It would be scary, though, if everyone had his powers and could hack into everything – in the wrong hands it would cause a lot of damage. The only danger with such ‘technology current’ books like these, is that they may become outdated quite fast. Already, reading the fast page about an iPhone 3GS, I thought this book was old. But despite, the phone being an outdate iPhone model, all the abilities that Harvey had, and the themes Brooks explored are still very relevant and I think will (unfortunately) continue to be for a long time.

One of the most present idea in this book is that of morality. What is good and evil? Brooks really captured how there is a gray area between everything. It was obvious to see that the bad guys, were bad. But the protagonist, the supposedly ‘good guy’, isn’t perfect. The police are after iBoy because of the methods he was using. I think it was all a question of did the gang members really deserve it all. And also, if iBoy kept using his powers where would he draw the line between good people and bad people, especially as he seemed to be losing any empathy towards people, would there be a turning point? Would iBoy the hero turn into iBoy the villain? Personally, I was happy with what iBoy was doing. With his abilities he was always 100% sure of who committed the crimes. But in the real world, we can never be sure. It’s all about perspective. There have so many cases of innocent people put in prisons. It becomes a question of can really judge a person’s innocence/guiltiness. And, if like iBoy, we use the same violent methods to stop the bad guys, does it mean we have stooped to their levels and become just as bad as them? With many of the Middle Eastern conflicts that America and other Western countries have intervened, they just seem to have increased the violence. How can these Western powers condemn nations for the oppression and violence, if they go into other countries and do the exact same?

All in all, I enjoyed reading iBoy. I mean, I don’t think it’s a book set to be a classic. But I did enjoy it. And Brooks was able to present dark themes with depth, nothing was black and white. It was quite heavy with all the violence, so it’s better for an older adolescent audience.