Book Blurb:
The earth’s core overheats. The sovereign leader vanishes. A young girl is the survivors’ only hope …
What little land is habitable is patrolled by cutthroat gangs of escaped subversives, but that’s not the greatest threat facing sixteen-year-old Derry Connelly, her brother Owen, and a ragged band of Preppers holed up in a bunker in the Sawtooth Mountains. Mysterious hoverships operated by clones are targeting adolescents for extraction.
Owen, is one of the first to disappear. To save him, Derry must strike a deal with the murderous subversives, and risk a daring raid to infiltrate the heart of the extraction operation.
But will the rookie leader falter when forced to choose between her brother and a clone who ignites something inside her she didn’t know was possible?
My Review:
2 Out Of 5 Stars
Genre: Dystopian, Mystery, Survival--
In a distant future, The earth's core exploded, causing many people to die and the rest to struggle to survive. Derry and her brother Owen live in one of few underground cities, just trying to survive and avoid the flying ships that come and collect people never to return again. When a neighboring leader comes to accuse Derry's group of being involved in the missing people, Derry tries to get involved. What she finds out is much more complicated than anything she expected and now she needs to take a stand to save those she cares for.
I hate to say it, but I did not really enjoy this book. I wanted to, I swear. When I first started reading I was instantly interested in an dystopian world with a melted core and potentially alien abduction. But then I got to know the main character Derry and I really did not like her and the real plot was revealed and my interest started to fizzle out. I feel bad giving the book a negative review and I am sure someone else would really like it, but it was too inconsistent for me.
Derry was very wishy washy and yet full of herself. When she bragged at the beginning about her skills and talents I was ready for a strong female character to save the day. Well, that was not what I got. I never actually saw said skills in action, instead a group of big strong men came to save her at most opportunities. And that's fine, but not when I was expecting kick-butt girl who still acted like she was a badass after needing to be rescued. She was also inconsistent with her feelings and actions. She is so desperate to find her brother, yet her potential love interest pops up and all of a sudden she forgets about her brother to dedicate herself to saving her love. Priorities mean nothing, obviously, and her emotions were so very fickle. She tried to find a dangerous group of rogues, but once she does she acts like it was a bad accident and tries to get away without doing her original goal. She was also super judgy to people, harshly thinking of them due to past sins that they so obviously were upset over. My tipping point for feeling vaguely annoyed by her to completely not liking her was when she played on another person's weakness to intentionally cause pain and thought of worthlessness. She did not like the person and was jealous of his relationship with her brother, yet I never saw him do or say anything mean to her and he was actively trying to help her. For her to cruelly lash out with prior planning made me stop caring what happened to her.
There were a few other things that made me question the book such as the gang members and the terrible slang they used, as if I was watching a bad movie with stereotypical gang actions and phrases such as "homies". I really hope that word dies out by the time this era comes around. Also, if the earth's core has melted or whatever, wouldn't every thing be thrown out of wack such as vegetation and animals as well as potentially the atmosphere and seasons? Yet pretty much everything is the same, yet it is mentioned that big game has moved elsewhere, but that was the only real chance I saw. I feel like I needed more insight into what caused the infrostructure that the book used with the government and how everything was set up, but it was only a mildly frustrating hint. Oh and if clones are made from someone with a disease, why would the clone have immunity to the disease? Were they genetically altered to be such, and if that was the case then why were the bootleggers having issues? The story raised so many questions for me but truly had no answers.
I think maybe this book would be good for someone looking for an adventure story, since that was a lot of the book getting into dangerous situations and resolving them. I think that the idea of the story had potential but it just was not executed in a way that caused me to be very interested. (I would have given the book a higher rating if aliens were involved, though.)
I received this title in return for my honest review.
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