The book: Under the Never Sky (Under the Never Sky #1)
The author: Veronica Rossi
The rating: 4 stars
Like Cinder and Legend before it, Under the Never Sky was one of those books that I'd been cognisant of for a long time but that I'd always passed up whenever I came across it at the bookstore. It had a pretty cover, a dystopian premise, and a whimsical title that appealed to the girly romantic in me, but the blurb always made me wary. Girl-from-dystopian-society meets savage-boy-from-the wilds and falls in love... it's not the kind of summary that instills the necessary confidence that it won't just be the sort of hackneyed dystopian-romance cash-in I know and loathe. However, after the debacle that was the Delirium series, I picked it up at the library, comforted by the fact that no matter what, it wouldn't be the worst book I read this summer.
Despite my low expectations, the first few chapters of Under the Never Sky didn't impress me much. Genetically-engineered perfect!girl with a cringeworthy name à la preteen fan-fiction, handwave-y future!tech, a futurified version of a topical societal issue to give the impression of being 'meaningful literature'... coupled with the fact that Rossi does not even have the advantage of Lauren Oliver's strangely-melodic prose, for a time I feared that I had been tempting fate with that whole 'it wouldn't be the worst book I read this summer' thought.
However, as I continued with the novel, I began to find that Under the Never Sky's dust jacket synopsis hadn't truly done the novel justice; the story was more than the Twilight-esque 'I-love-him-but-he's-dangerous' shtick that I had feared it might amount to be. The romance had surprising depth, realism, and humour; the fantasy elements gave the novel a unique twist; Rossi managed to continuously steer the novel away from the plot pitfalls into which I'd initially thought it would sink.
Overall, Under the Never Sky was by no means fantastic, but it was a solidly enjoyable start to what has the potential to be a solidly enjoyable series. I'll definitely be checking out Through the Ever Night at some point in the near future, though first on my list: the wildly successful A Song of Ice and Fire series. That might take me a while.
Wednesday 20 August 2014
Sunday 3 August 2014
27. Third Strike
The book: Requiem (Delirium #3)
The author: Lauren Oliver
The rating: 2 stars
I've been struggling to write a review for this book, procrastinating in a way that is normally reserved only for term papers and phone calls to relatives, and for a while I couldn't understand why. I've always enjoyed writing these reviews (it's not as if I'm being paid to tell the Internet my opinions, after all), but for some reason my subconscious seemed to be avoiding writing this review at all costs. By this point, I've already read another book that needs reviewing, so I've been forced to ret-con this review into existence lest not count Requiem towards my challenge total entirely. But now, struggling to think of something to say about the final, trite book in what I've found to be an entirely trite series, I've realized that the problem is that I simply didn't care one iota about Requiem.
Confession time: today is actually August 15th, not the 3rd, so I finished this book about two weeks ago, and I still don't have anything to say about it except to rehash everything I've said about Delirium and Pandemonium. It was boring; nothing stands out two weeks later except for the fact that the ending was positively horrendous. Utterly unexplored character deaths, arbitrary endpoints, and overall no semblance of closure for pretty much all of the major plot points of the trilogy. If I was actually emotionally invested in the series, I would probably have been thoroughly disappointed.
And, yeah, that's about it for this review. If you're thinking 'Wait, what? This review is over already? She hasn't even said anything yet!', then congratulations! That's the exact feeling you'll get when you turn the last page of Requiem. Now that you've got that experience out of the way, you can leave the Delirium series on the shelf and save yourself a handful of hours of your hard-earned free time.
The author: Lauren Oliver
The rating: 2 stars
I've been struggling to write a review for this book, procrastinating in a way that is normally reserved only for term papers and phone calls to relatives, and for a while I couldn't understand why. I've always enjoyed writing these reviews (it's not as if I'm being paid to tell the Internet my opinions, after all), but for some reason my subconscious seemed to be avoiding writing this review at all costs. By this point, I've already read another book that needs reviewing, so I've been forced to ret-con this review into existence lest not count Requiem towards my challenge total entirely. But now, struggling to think of something to say about the final, trite book in what I've found to be an entirely trite series, I've realized that the problem is that I simply didn't care one iota about Requiem.
Confession time: today is actually August 15th, not the 3rd, so I finished this book about two weeks ago, and I still don't have anything to say about it except to rehash everything I've said about Delirium and Pandemonium. It was boring; nothing stands out two weeks later except for the fact that the ending was positively horrendous. Utterly unexplored character deaths, arbitrary endpoints, and overall no semblance of closure for pretty much all of the major plot points of the trilogy. If I was actually emotionally invested in the series, I would probably have been thoroughly disappointed.
And, yeah, that's about it for this review. If you're thinking 'Wait, what? This review is over already? She hasn't even said anything yet!', then congratulations! That's the exact feeling you'll get when you turn the last page of Requiem. Now that you've got that experience out of the way, you can leave the Delirium series on the shelf and save yourself a handful of hours of your hard-earned free time.
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