Review: It was okay.
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 06 30, 2014
This is one of those books that you absolutely want to love based on the cover, the synopsis, the premise, and the reviews from some friends, but you just...can't.Overall, it's a good YA dystopian novel. I didn't have issues with the world-building like some other readers did - I thought it was rather brilliant with its idiosyncratic build through the lines of its Dickens-reminiscent spirit - but I had some other consternations with it.Predominantly, the person in my head was incapable of getting along with the characters. Unfortunately for me I am exclusively a character-driven reader, so if I don't like a character, I don't like the book. That being said, I'm all for intelligent, witty characters of the male persuasion in YA novels - see Tate in Scan who is one of my favorite YA characters ever - but Dodger takes it over the top. Instead of being intelligently witty in a fun, roundabout way, he comes across as overly sarcastic, mean, borderline mysogynistic, and sort of a bully. Gia annoyed me, but I'm not sure if it's worth mentioning that a female character in a YA novel was annoying. Because that's never happened before.To build on The Bad News, this novel was so, so, slow. Not exactly something you expect from a YA dystopian; it's not a contemporary romance and shouldn't read as such. I expected it to open with a bang and lay on the action/adventure - again, a little more like Scan - but it really did take a while to get moving.Just because The Artful wasn't my favorite, doesn't mean Stanton made a non-reader out of me with this book; on stylistic principle alone, this author wrote a beautifully dark novel about children just trying to survive, which is an important addition to the YA genre no matter which way you spin it. In addition to that, he does not censor the savagery or barbarity of a novel in a post-apocalyptic setting just because it is written for the YA genre, which is something I respect highly. Beyond one-dimensional characters, YA authors that do intentionally wrap their themes in pretty shiny tape is the number one no-no for me, so I appreciated that very much, just like the first time that happened to me, when I read The Hunger Games.Enjoyable versus Annoying, as a whole, it was somewhere in the middle. It was okay.**I was provided with a complimentary copy of this e-book by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.