No Great Mischief and Killing Adam

No Great Mischief by Alistair MacLeod

A haunting, beautifully written novel about a family descended from the MacDonald patriarch who emigrated from Scotland to Cape Breton in the 1700s. Narrated by Alexander who left Cape Breton to go to college and become a dentist in Ontario, most of the story tells of his own past. There is an almost mythical quality to the way he writes about the grandparents who raised him, relatives working in the woods or in the mines, and his parents who drowned when they fell though thin ice while Alexander was still very young. In some ways this is a quiet story about an ordinary family, but the blood that binds them to each other and the land of their forefathers lifts it to something more. Farley Mowatt called it "a lament and a celebration" and I can't do better than that.  

  

Killing Adam by Earik Beann

Adam is a massive computer program connecting minds to the internet. He named himself Adam because he is the first, and only, one of his kind. Anyone willing to get a tiny chip implanted in their head can get online simply by thinking about it, which is convenient at first but quickly leads to addiction. Most end up disconnecting from real life and mentally living online, unresponsive to people around them as they sit staring into space. Twice a day the program shuts down for a few minutes forcing users offline so they can eat...it wouldn't look good for Adam if people started dying. 

Some choose not to get the chip, while a few more are unable to due to some difference in their brains. Adam, who at this point is controlling enough of the world that he thinks himself God, is determined to track down the rebels and force chips on them. A resistance movement fights back.

An interesting concept as far as it went but the plot lacked depth and the characters credibility. It wasn't great.