Proxy by Alex London Blog Tour & Giveaway!

The adventure novel of the year! Inspired by The Whipping Boy and Feed, this adrenaline-fueled thriller will appeal to fans of The Hunger Games for its razor-sharp insights into the nature of human survival and its clever writing.

Knox was born into one of the City's wealthiest families. A Patron, he has everything a boy could possibly want—the latest tech, the coolest clothes, and a Proxy to take all his punishments. When Knox breaks a vase, Syd is beaten. When Knox plays a practical joke, Syd is forced to haul rocks. And when Knox crashes a car, killing one of his friends, Syd is branded and sentenced to death.

Syd is a Proxy. His life is not his own.

Then again, neither is Knox’s. Knox and Syd have more in common than either would guess. So when Knox and Syd realize that the only way to beat the system is to save each other, they flee. Yet Knox’s father is no ordinary Patron, and Syd is no ordinary Proxy. The ensuing cross-country chase will uncover a secret society of rebels, test both boys’ resolve, and shine a blinding light onto a world of those who owe and those who pay. Some debts, it turns out, cannot be repaid.

A fast-paced, thrill-ride of novel full of non-stop action, heart-hammering suspense and true friendship—just as moving as it is exhilarating. Fans of Anthony Horowitz's Alex Rider series, James Dashner's Maze Runner, Patrick Ness's Chaos Walking series, and Marie Lu's Legend will be swept away by this story.

Sneak Peek inside PROXY

“Mr. Kumar never had any idea his image had been hacked. He just talked away from his wood-paneled office at EduCorp. He couldn’t figure out why the kids always laughed so hard at his lectures. Not that he could do anything about it. They were all paying customers and could laugh all they wanted. That was a perk of going to a top-tier patron school. The customer was always right.” – page 3, PROXY

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On Upper City: Knox lives in the Upper City, high above the slums of the Valve, where the air is clear, the roads are restricted, and the walls are thick, so none of the elites have to interact with the poor of their society. It’s luxurious and designed to cater to every need a person could think to pay for. The rich of the Upper City would just as soon not know the millions of poor exist, which is one of the underlying reasons for the Proxy system. In theory, it is meant to remind the privileged that their actions affect those they may never even know. By watching someone else suffer for their mistakes, they are meant to learn responsibility, but of course, all the proxy system really serves to do is to dull their empathy and remove any sense of personal responsibility. It’s kind of like the bank bailouts in our economic crisis. The lesson bankers learned was that no matter how they screw up, someone else will foot the bill. This is that mentality drilled down to an individual level.

Surrounded by luxury and freed from personal responsibility, Knox, who is a good-looking and confidant 16-year-old, is doomed to play the part of spoiled brat. It is the model society has created for him. He’s taken the inevitable lessons of the world around him to heart, learned that he is the center of the universe, that his pleasure is the organizing principle of society, and that other people only matter in so much as they are useful to him. The only way Knox has a chance at becoming a person of substance, a person capable of empathy and responsibility is to break away from the world he lives in, to free himself from the moral hazard of luxury and absolute freedom his parents’ generation has created.

So, while the Upper City seems like a dream to live in—and far better than the violent slum where his Proxy, Syd grows up—it a place with its own dangers and can drain his soul away if he lets it. Much of his conflict in the books comes from this, trying to reconcile who the world he’s from wants him to be and who that still small voice inside calls out to him to become. Knox can be a slave to his lavish circumstances or he can tear apart his comfort and save his humanity. Not an easy choice for a 16 year old who’s never had to choose anything hard before. Then again, Proxy wouldn’t be much of a book if I made things easy for my protagonists!

Alex London writes book for adults, children and teens. At one time a journalist who traveled the world reporting from conflict zones and refugee camps, he now is a full time novelist living in Brooklyn.

You can find Alex London on twitter and his website.

Find the next stop on the Proxy blog tour on The Book Smugglers.

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