This book starts out so strong. The first third of it had me completely hooked, turning the pages as I fast as I could, trying to figure out what's going on. The main character Melanie is a compelling protagonist, and we get dragged along with her as she tries to piece together what makes her so different from other people and why the adults treat her and the other children the way they do.
Then we hit the middle third of the book, and it becomes a complete snooze-fest. The story slows and the action crawls along. What made the book so interesting in the beginning is mostly gone, and it's replaced by what I think of as the classic zombie genre of people running and hiding from "brains... brains...". I found myself often flipping ahead a few chapters just to see something going on, then catching myself and coming back to read what I had skimmed through.
Another thing I didn't like is that the main scientist trying to find a cure for this infection is extremely unlikable. And through her narrative, the author spends a good amount of time trying to convince the reader on how this infection came to be with lots of scientific jargon. I just don't find that I need to be so thoroughly convinced with such boring lectures. Part of reading this genre is being able to suspend my beliefs.
Thankfully, the last third of this book picks up the pace a bit, and it ends on an interesting note. While reading through the majority of this tale, I found myself thinking how I didn't see where it was headed. And it really is that way until pretty much the last page of the book. I enjoyed the ending and thought it was an unexpected and clever way to wrap up the story.
Throughout the story, I found its the treatment of Melanie and the question of ethics to be thoughtful and multifaceted. What does it mean to be human and sentient? At what point do we consider a creature to have rights? The book shows us many different answers to these question through the various characters' perspectives. To me, this is the core takeaway from the book, and it's handled with nuance and intelligence.
Readaroo Rating: 3 stars
0 comments:
Post a Comment