Book Information
Pages: 312
Published: June 2013
Series: Book 1 of PODs
Good Reads Synopsis
Seventeen-year-old Eva is a chosen one. Chosen to live, while others meet a swift and painful death from an incurable virus so lethal, a person is dead within days of symptoms emerging. In the POD system, a series of underground habitats built by the government, she waits with the other chosen for the deadly virus to claim those above. Separated from family and friends, it's in the PODs she meets David. And while true love might not conquer all, it's a balm for the broken soul.
After a year, scientists believe the population has died, and without living hosts, so has the virus. That's the theory, anyway. But when the PODs are opened, survivors find the surface holds a vicious secret. The virus mutated, infecting those left top-side and creating... monsters.
Eva and David hide from the infected in the abandoned PODs. Together they try to build a life--a new beginning. But the infected follow and are relentless in their attacks. Leaving Eva and David to fight for survival, and pray for a cure.
My Review
The cover is well put together and the synopsis is promising. I’m a fan of sci-fi and horror, so this did seem like my kind of book. The ‘monsters’ sounded a lot like an attempt to reference zombies without saying the z-word. I like zombies so I was excited.
I liked the forming of character relationships in the PODs and how well their lives were explained. The idea of being stuck in a POD which could be completely shut off from the world made me feel claustrophobic. When a POD is taken offline for the first time it definitely got an emotional reaction from me, which I think could be due to the relationship between Katie and Cameron. I felt awful for her! It was kind of a shame to leave the other characters from the POD. Perhaps this story could have been a little more interesting by flipping between a few character’s perspectives.
I think that younger readers may like this book, along with people who like romance and rosy novels. The latter type of readers probably won’t dip into dystopian novels often, or at all, but this could be a nice way to introduce them to elements of the genre. For fans of emotionally powerful dystopian stories or sci-fi, this book might be underwhelming.
I think the biggest failing of this book is the protagonist. As it is written from a first person perspective if the reader doesn’t like or feel connected to that character then things aren’t going to go well. I found Eva to be very…blunt, but not in a rational way. The opening left me with the sour impression that Eva was immature and unlikeable (‘Beanbag Guy’? How very original and clever); I don’t like that in a book unless the character grows out of it. I found her inability to learn about the virus from what people were saying in school to be shocking. Did she walk around with loud headphones on all day? End of the world things are what people buzz about, even the events (or dates) that clearly won’t be the end of the world creates excitement among young adults, teenagers and even adults. Yet somehow Eva was shielded from this. When she finally learned of the virus she just came across as having a bad attitude and being passive-aggressive. I couldn’t feel horrified with her or even pity that she was in that story because it felt like she kind of deserved it. There were some other issues I would bring up – but they are minor details and not especially important to the plot.
I also found Eva to be undeserving of her apparent intelligence. Maybe she was just a book smart, work hard kind of person. Most of the time, the high achieving people I meet have personalities to match, but there’s always an exception. The way she thinks about things and the way in which she behaves in various situations just had me thinking she was an idiot. She endangers herself and many others recklessly and without remorse.
But let’s talk about something else – the romance. I like a bit of rosy romance, I like a bit of torn apart lovers, I like a bit of family friendly romance and I like a bit of the steamy stuff. But this took the romance biscuit and left it soggy. The amount of times their kisses are described (along with David’s ‘taste’) was fine at first, teenagers are kind of passionate and some people like a lot of that stuff in their novels, but then it just got boring. Every kiss seemed like the same over-described kiss. Every time it happened I started skim reading to the next non-kissy non-touchy paragraph. By the time Eva and David started to go places I was a master at skimming over their love scenes and I really wished it would just stop.
I also found the character of Jai Li to be a little unbelievable. Despite having a social security number she doesn’t speak basic English. Perhaps worse of all, I felt the story lacked the general hopelessness and urgency of dystopian fiction.
So yes, there are some details in the plot which I think are a little absurd and I felt pretty detached from the main character. However, I thought the storyline had a lot of potential, about half way through (and the ending in particular) things seemed to be kind of rushed (besides the love scenes, which were pretty drawn out in comparison). It would have been great to have the second part of the novel extended and the harsh, dangerous and terrifying world outside the compounds really made to feel that way. It also would have been nice to have those infected with the virus made more or less human, to give them more impact.
No comments:
Post a Comment