Most of the characters in 2030 aren't very sympathetic. Who was your favorite, and do you think the characters were realistically portrayed?

I think the author intended to people this future with people that no one wants to turn into. In his future, the mistakes we're making now will not turn out well for us!

Brad was whiny and entitled, and Max is of course unbalanced by the end. The president seemed to care, but he's cheating on his wife. Sam Mueller seems only to care about being a genius. It was only Kathy's suffering that really touched me, because it seemed so unfair and so preventable.

I actually liked Shen Li the best. He was trying to help people and seemed to genuinely care about them.

I think it's likely that many people would react to these life events the way that Brooks portrays them. But I'm hoping he's wrong.

I think one of the weaknesses of this book was the lack of character development. I really didn't feel like I got to know or care about any of them!

I agree with leeb, I didn't really connect with any characters based on how they were developed by the author, only by how much I could related to what they were dealing with.

If this was a movie, I would consider it "B-rated". The prosody was poor, the characters shallow and undeveloped and the plot line simplistic. That said ... Kathy was the only character that was flushed out and real. She was the only one that drew any sympathy. Things happened TO her and she reacted. She was a regular teenager who loved her father but rebelled against him as normal teens do. She had a nice boyfriend and met someone else who intrigued her and she fell "in love" with a charming and engaging man. She dealt with her father's death, was responsible with the debt, found a job, and engaged with an "old" finding an enriching relationship that many "youngs" reviled. She was the only character that displayed growth and Brooks probably meant us to attach to her.

I agree with leeb, the characters were cardboard and hard to relate to because they were so generic.

I didn't like any of the characters and think this is the biggest weakness of the book.

I also felt that the characters were rather shallow. I couldn't sympathize with anyone except maybe Kathy a little at the end. I usually don't really like a book that doesn't have at least one character I can really love. I did really enjoy this book however as it made me think about a lot of topics facing us in our country today.

I agree with the majority here that there wasn't one character I liked the best. I couldn't get to know them the way that I wanted. However, I liked the book because of all the medical and technological advancements and it made me think "what if?"

I agree with izabel, in that Kathy is the only sympathetic character.

I believe the author is either very cynical or else thought that a cynical tone was appropriate for his book. This may do well with young adult readers, but I think they prefer a little more feeling, as in Twilight and Hunger Games (not that I've read either one, but I think there is a lot of appeal to emotion in them.)

Thinking about dystopian novels that do very well, they usually have more surprises, where the future depicted in the novel isn't quite what we expect, like 1984 or Brave New World. They also have more colorful situations and characters.

I don't see a great future for this book, although it might have done much better with a perceptive editor and a rewrite or two.