Showing posts with label dystopian. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dystopian. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

SAFE - Dawn Husted

One of the cool perks of writing a book review blog is that sometimes new authors reach out to you and ask you to read and review their book. How cool is that? For a book nerd like me, it’s pretty awesome. I was recently contacted for such a task recently by Dawn Husted to review her book, SAFE. This book is a dystopian, Young Adult novel which can be a pretty intimidating genre to bust in to right now with the HUGE hits of late like The Hunger Games and Divergent series.
Many years ago, massive earthquakes devastated the world. Survivors settled The Colony to try and rebuild a safe and stable place to live. It is here where everything in society is carefully planned out and keeps its residents under close scrutiny which is all necessary to keep civilization alive. Original settlers were injected with a vaccine to keep them free of contagious and fatal diseases. This vaccine eventually became integrated into everyone’s DNA, which President Falcon says helps keep their colony thriving.
SAFE follows the journey of Penny and James whose worlds are flipped upside down one day when Penny is taken from her home and told that she is sick. She faces two options – either exile or execution. In haste, Penny learns about a sister, Madeline, she never knew she had and her father says she must go find and rescue her. She and her boyfriend James make an attempt to escape the Colony and find her sister but must overcome many obstacles on their quest to find Madeline.
Overall, the story line was captivating and had some good twists and turns that you don’t see coming. It took me a little while to get in to the book as I found the language in the beginning a bit disjointed and wordy at times. Penny and James are both extremely likable characters that are easy to root for from beginning to end.
Since I don’t do spoilers, I won’t say what happens at the end but I did think the story ended a bit abruptly. Sudden endings seemed to be a bit of a theme throughout this story as I felt like many of the conflicts that Penny and James faced were resolved a bit too easily and swiftly. I’m not sure though if this book is the first in a series, so that may explain the sudden ending to the story.
In the end, this was a quick read that I think could be a good introduction for young readers into dystopian novels. If you are looking for something to read in a couple of days that has lots of action and interesting characters - go check this one out!
Rating: Good 7 out of 10

Friday, February 28, 2014

The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins

What better way to kick off my literary journey through 100 books than with a book that everyone has been talking about lately - The Hunger Games.
Unless you've been living under a rock, you have heard of this best-selling novel. Love it or hate it - The Hunger Games has achieved super stardom in the book world. Even though the novel's target audience is young adults, it has captured the attention of everyone from tweens to major Hollywood producers.
Now - I don't want you to misunderstand my enthusiasm as we go through this post. I definitely did not jump on the Katniss bandwagon when it first hit the shelves. Honestly, I did the Twilight thing and was a bit concerned that people may start questioning my literary eye if I continued reading these trendy Tween trilogies. But, after many of my friends insisted that I read it and that I would LOVE it - OMG - I picked up the first book. And I was hooked.
This dystopian novel takes place in Panem, which is a collection of 12 fenced-in districts that all exist simply to serve the wealthy, technologically advanced, power-hungry Captial. The heroine of the story is Katniss Everdeen. She is a closely guarded yet opinionated teen who expertly wields a bow and arrow thanks to the teachings of her late father. Katniss spends her days hunting illegally outside the fence of District 12 in order to help support her distant mother and baby sister, Prim. A seemingly familiar dystopian setting, but noble nonetheless.
As an annual reminder of their control over the Districts, the Capital conducts the Hunger Games. Each District is required to send 1 boy and 1 girl (chosen by random drawing) to the games where they will fight tributes from the other Districts - to the death. While this is a fairly grim idea - it truly sends a powerful political statement to the audience. The entirety of the Games is televised throughout the Districts and everyone is required by law to watch.
Collins then transports you into the violent arena of the Hunger Games where nothing is off limits. The Gamemakers control every piece of the arena from weather, to food and crazy mutated animals. The story definitely keeps you on the edge of your seat in terms of action but some of the more truly "young adult" themes come alive during this part of the story and it lost me a bit. I found much of the romance that develops between Katniss and Peeta cliche but in all fairness, it should pass of perfectly well for the intended, younger audience. It was interesting though to read about this relatively forced, one-sided teenage love from an adult perspective and try to remember what those days were like. I swear I was never like either of the two in this story though.
I know many people found it difficult to get past the idea of children fighting to the death and it prevented them from picking up this book. While it is gruesome and violent and somewhat hard to stomach in parts, the story really hits on some tough and eye-opening political themes that those of us living in America today could eerily relate to. If you can move past the violence, you are in for a real action-packed, well paced read that will leave you scrambling to pick up the second book.
This review comes after my second reading of this story and I can say that it really still was just as good as the first time I picked it up. And I really wouldn't be surprised if I pick it up again somewhere down the line.
Rating: 9 out of 10 - Excellent