Too Much Noise

In a world where unhappiness has been cured, feeling anything too deeply is a crime.

Kael Vasquez believes in the system. As a compliance officer for the Bureau of Emotional Wellbeing, he's spent years helping citizens achieve optimal stability - guiding them toward the steady green glow of their Halo devices, away from the dangerous reds and yellows of unregulated feeling. The mass suicides of the Abandonment Era proved what happens when emotions run unchecked. The Halo saved humanity. Kael has never questioned this.

Then his sister steps off a bridge.

Her suicide note is three words: "Too much noise."

She was stable. Her metrics were perfect. She said the right things, smiled at the right times, and still she chose to die. Kael's investigation into her death pulls him toward the Solvents - a resistance movement that believes humanity traded its soul for serenity. They're not trying to destroy the system. They're trying to feel, even if only for thirty seconds.

What Kael discovers will force him to question everything: the sister he thought he knew, the system he's devoted his life to, and whether the right to be miserable might be the most human right of all.

Too Much Noise is a literary dystopian novel about emotional suppression, institutional control, and the quiet rebellions we wage to remain ourselves. For readers of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, and Dave Eggers' The Circle.