Okay, I’m not a big fan. Normally I really enjoy dystopian novels.
I like how they can reflect the darker aspects of our culture, but also provide
us with a certain amount of hope. I love how characters come to realize the
injustice of their way of life. Books like 1984,
Brave New World, and The Giver are among some of my favorite
novels of all time. Despite this however, I have not enjoyed this novel so far.
I think a major reason for this is that it doesn’t seem reasonable. While the
other works I mentioned seem believable in their own right because they allow
time for the change to occur or provide a believable explanation for the
changed circumstances, this novel provides us with a very foreign world with
major, unlikely and unbelievable changes, while still grounding it with modern
popular culture references. Perhaps this was an attempt to make it seem like
this future is closer than we think, but it just comes off as out of place and
strange.
I feel as if the themes of this novel are also forced and
over the top. The novel presents a world that is ridiculous, would never come
to pass, and is clearly over the top wrong and incompetent. Then the novel
proceeds to try and convince us that that world is wrong. No duh! I’m sorry but
you’re not clever because you’re telling us that killing off children is a bad
idea. It is an oversimplification of a complexed issue and it does nothing to further
any sort of point.
Characters at this point in time are okay I suppose. Nothing
special here. I don’t dislike any of the characters but feel no sort of real
connection with them. The plot for the most part is just the kids getting into
and out of bad situations, interwoven with comments about how bad their unrealistic
world is.
The main characters are pretty young, but I still feel as if
they’re not represented in the best way. It feels like young teens as written
by older adults. Kids like Taylor Swift right? We should include Taylor Swift
in their conversation! Additionally, I don’t care how weird your world is, I
don’t think anybody would be happy to just go off and die, so there’s also
that.
It must be pretty sure that I don’t really like this one. It
just feels forced to me and
additionally it seems like its building up a massive straw man just to feel superior
when it beats it down. I could always buy the world of 1984 or other dystopian novels, and this one fails to do that, a
critical failure that I can’t overcome. I don’t know what else to say, I’m just
not a fan. It’s not terrible, but certainly not something I have enjoyed thus
far. C-
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