28. Reservations

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.