Review: Banded.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 06 14, 2014
*** I received a gift copy from the author in exchange for an honest review ***The concept of the banding reminded me slightly of the film ‘In Time’ (2011), with the countdown that ultimately ended in death.I see other people are reminded of ‘Divergent’ with the sectors. For me, it reminded me more of ‘The Hunger Games’, but that could be because I haven’t yet seen ‘Divergent’. However, in reading the book, ‘Banded’ held it’s ground and was quite a good read too. I couldn’t put it down.Kalenna (what a lovely, unusual name) receives her band when she turns 16, as is the custom of the time she lives in. She then joins the other 16 year old teens in getting shipped off to HQ to be sorted into their future sectors. Her character is pretty naive when it comes to attracting boys, which I found to be quite a refreshing change after the last few books I’ve read where the heroine is the same age and “in love”.The story was quite a nice easy way to ease the reader into how Kalenna’s world worked. We are introduced to the bands and how they work. We are introduced to how the teens are sorted into sectors and what jobs are related to each sector.The training and the fight scenes are described really well, enough so that you can almost imagine being part of the class.The characters are all believable, but I would have liked to have seen more about the “mole” and the the havoc they supposedly caused.Although there are fight scenes and romance is touched on, ‘Banded’, in my opinion, is suitable for YA from the age of 12 and up. I can see both young boys and girls enjoying this and wanting to carry on reading the series.‘Banded’ deserves a 5 Shamrocks rating as I think it’s exactly right for any YA. It’s not OTT, it’s not violently bloody, it’s not all kissy face and sexual tension.