Hey guys! Happy Monday and welcome to September!
Are any of you as surprised, panicky and overwhelmed at how fast the summer has passed?? I feel like the days have blurred into each other!
I took a lil break from blogging during the weekend cause I was feeling very much on edge and not at my best emotionally and I needed the lil breather, so I'm a bit late posting the review for my August book from my Alyssa Recommends list!
Better late than never, here it is as my Mark This Book Monday entry of this week!
Linked by Imogen Howson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Science fiction will always probably be my first literary love, and Linked is one of those science fiction stories that I love! This one came highly recommended by Alyssa from The Eater of Books and it part of her Alyssa Recommends list!
We start the book with Elissa trying to find help in a new doctor to find out what's been wrong with her in the last 3 years and to find a way to fix her. She's so willing to get rid of her allucinations and unexplained pains and bruises that she even overlooks some stuff that make her alarms ping during the visit, getting her surgery scheduled in 4 days. Then we see her get to what's now her normal life of dreading the pain and visions and being shunned by her peers.
It was a necessary beginning and it really showed Elissa's personality and motivations but it felt a bit odd for me, mostly cause I wasn't sure where the book was going yet and even though this is a very good thing, even if I had a hunch about what part of the mystery might be about early on, I had no idea what was gonna happen or how. Then things started happening and the action started moving even if we get very few answers and many more new questions once Lissa meets Lin.
The dynamics between these two are very interesting, since Lissa feels responsible for Lin, given that she's her twin and she's been suffering horrible experiences (the ones she had been experiencing in the shape of pains and bruises) but also she doesn't know Lin and she's a bit scared of the unknown and the different and Lin is very much both, even if both wear the same face.
Aside from the action, we get quite an nice world building about Sekoia and the colonization of planets and space flight that we find peppered throughout the book, never too much exposition to make it feel like info-dump, but always enough to hint at things and to make us see and understand better what world is this one we're in, and the kind of mentality and mind frame the people in this planet have.
One of the most important themes treated in this book for me was the whole twin, human, non-human and sub-human. It was fantastically presented and explained and how it was compared with cloning and how it was shown once again that by making people think in terms of "us" anf "them" and labelling someone as "non-human" for whatever reason, some people will be prejudiced enough to believe their prejudices and not the evidence before them.
I was quite disgusted with the human race at more than one point in this book, even if it's science fiction and it hasn't happend and it might never happen, but unfortunately I don't see it being so impossible to happen. We've got plenty of examples of what collateral means and how money, power and the interest of those with money and power can be more important than human lives, so imagine those considered "sub-human"?.
The first half of the book was okay, Lissa did get a little on my nerves on occasion with how naive she was, and Lin creeped me out with how intense she was. But the second half of the book was so much better, full of interesting ethical topics raised, action non-stop with raised stakes and even a bit of romance thrown in (nothing like life or death situations to decide that enough is enough and you ought not keep things hidden not even from yourself anymore!).
Then ending was more of the quiet kind, not a big confrontation, but there had been plenty of surprises and revelations in the pages coming up to the final ones and it doesn't end with a horrible cliffhanger which is very much welcome! The ending is open enough to make you want to read the next but doesn't leave you hanging painfully! Well deserved 4 stars!
View all my reviews
Are any of you as surprised, panicky and overwhelmed at how fast the summer has passed?? I feel like the days have blurred into each other!
I took a lil break from blogging during the weekend cause I was feeling very much on edge and not at my best emotionally and I needed the lil breather, so I'm a bit late posting the review for my August book from my Alyssa Recommends list!
Better late than never, here it is as my Mark This Book Monday entry of this week!
Linked by Imogen HowsonMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Science fiction will always probably be my first literary love, and Linked is one of those science fiction stories that I love! This one came highly recommended by Alyssa from The Eater of Books and it part of her Alyssa Recommends list!
We start the book with Elissa trying to find help in a new doctor to find out what's been wrong with her in the last 3 years and to find a way to fix her. She's so willing to get rid of her allucinations and unexplained pains and bruises that she even overlooks some stuff that make her alarms ping during the visit, getting her surgery scheduled in 4 days. Then we see her get to what's now her normal life of dreading the pain and visions and being shunned by her peers.
It was a necessary beginning and it really showed Elissa's personality and motivations but it felt a bit odd for me, mostly cause I wasn't sure where the book was going yet and even though this is a very good thing, even if I had a hunch about what part of the mystery might be about early on, I had no idea what was gonna happen or how. Then things started happening and the action started moving even if we get very few answers and many more new questions once Lissa meets Lin.
The dynamics between these two are very interesting, since Lissa feels responsible for Lin, given that she's her twin and she's been suffering horrible experiences (the ones she had been experiencing in the shape of pains and bruises) but also she doesn't know Lin and she's a bit scared of the unknown and the different and Lin is very much both, even if both wear the same face.
Aside from the action, we get quite an nice world building about Sekoia and the colonization of planets and space flight that we find peppered throughout the book, never too much exposition to make it feel like info-dump, but always enough to hint at things and to make us see and understand better what world is this one we're in, and the kind of mentality and mind frame the people in this planet have.
One of the most important themes treated in this book for me was the whole twin, human, non-human and sub-human. It was fantastically presented and explained and how it was compared with cloning and how it was shown once again that by making people think in terms of "us" anf "them" and labelling someone as "non-human" for whatever reason, some people will be prejudiced enough to believe their prejudices and not the evidence before them.
I was quite disgusted with the human race at more than one point in this book, even if it's science fiction and it hasn't happend and it might never happen, but unfortunately I don't see it being so impossible to happen. We've got plenty of examples of what collateral means and how money, power and the interest of those with money and power can be more important than human lives, so imagine those considered "sub-human"?.
The first half of the book was okay, Lissa did get a little on my nerves on occasion with how naive she was, and Lin creeped me out with how intense she was. But the second half of the book was so much better, full of interesting ethical topics raised, action non-stop with raised stakes and even a bit of romance thrown in (nothing like life or death situations to decide that enough is enough and you ought not keep things hidden not even from yourself anymore!).
Then ending was more of the quiet kind, not a big confrontation, but there had been plenty of surprises and revelations in the pages coming up to the final ones and it doesn't end with a horrible cliffhanger which is very much welcome! The ending is open enough to make you want to read the next but doesn't leave you hanging painfully! Well deserved 4 stars!
View all my reviews
Great review sweetie. <3 I'm glad you mostly loved this book :D I do think it sounds interesting, but probably not a book for me :p Sigh. Love your review, though. <3 Thank you for sharing Pili :)
ReplyDeleteThank you sweetie!! And of course, you know best what books are something you might enjoy!
DeleteBut, trust me, no love triangle here! ;)
Mostly, the reviews I've seen so far haven't been all that positive so it's very nice to see a different opinion. You make some very convincing points and I tend to agree with you on these things. Plus, the worldbuilding sounds very intriguing, and like you, I have a soft spot for sci-fi.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Maja! This has plenty of the good things that sci-fi has!
DeleteYay! I'm really glad you enjoyed this book! I always wanted to read but I never knew if I'd like it.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your review, I'm looking forward to read it soon!
I do hope you'll like it, Lis! It's a very cool book and with plenty of food for thought!
DeleteYAYAYAYAYAYAY FOUR STARS!! Woot!! To be honest, Lin always had me suspicious, throughout both books... not because she did anything wacky, but because she's so not human at times (which isn't her fault). Of course it'd be weird to us. But that just goes to show how well Howson crafted the character! :)
ReplyDeleteExcellent review, Pili! So glad you enjoyed this book :D
Alyssa @ The Eater of Books!
Yeah, Lin is a character done so well! She has to be my fave character of the book for sure!
DeleteNow, I cannot wait to read Unraveled!