Review: An Intersting Idea...with a few flaws
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 02 9, 2014
I'll admit that the dystopian genre has never been my favorite. Something about it, about the lows that humanity is willing to go to, just puts me in a funk. I tend to like to believe that humanity is not sostupid as to kill off their planet...but, yeah. Not so much. I'm delusional, not blind.There are some really good things about this dystopian though. I liked that humanity (while totally responsible for messing everything up) tries to right some its wrongs. It tries to fix the planet, seeding it with something called Overgrowth, that is supposed to help speed up the recovery time for the earth. I do wish we might have got a bit more on how exactly this was supposed to work though. It seemed like a vague idea, even if a good one. I also liked how they also tried to do their best to leave help for those left behind. They had supplies, so it was possible that they could continue to live in the cities. Which is probably good, 'cause the forest is kinda creepy.However there are just some things about this book I could not buy. One of them is the whole 'let the soldiers vote' thing. Putting aside the fact that soldiers don't vote, they do as they are told, but even if they did, how is it possible that you got every single soldier to vote yes to destroying the world? And whose soldier were these exactly? Did this future world only have one army? Was there only one governing body? But then it talked about a UN, so there were countries...but somehow by some miracle you actually got them to agree on something? I was also really unclear on exactly what kind of weapon they used to kill all these 'anarchists' because it was apparently enough to poison the whole damn planet, but wasn't enough to kill what is left of humanity...well, at least not yet. I'll admit that I am not exactly fluent on nuclear weapons (if that was in fact what was used) and their fallout, but if you are going to base your whole world concept on the idea that they are the reason everything is going to hell, it might help if you paint a clearer picture on how exactly it is doing it.As to the relationship between Daniel and Aldric...well, honestly I wasn't feeling it. Which, I guess is perfectly understandable, since they have just met, and well trust is going to be an issue for everyone. But it would have been nice by the end to feel some type of spark, at least. Maybe everything was just victim to the fact that there really is no happy, and certainly no ever-after, for anyone in this book. The best you seemed to be able to hope for was not in pain, with a side-helping of slightly content. It casts a bit of a downer on the whole story.I had a hard time buying a lot of what this book was selling. It has some really good points, and a real interesting story to tell, but I guess I'm a bit of a stickler for the story to make sense. And some parts just really didn't. Maybe in future books the world is better fleshed out, but here it leaves a lot of unanswered questions. I did enjoy Aldric's story though, and all the things he went through. His voice, and pov, were interesting. Maybe I'll read further into this series to find out if it gets less confusing, but I'm not sure. 2.5 stars.I was provided a copy of this book as part of the M/M Romance Group's DBML program on GoodReads in exchange for an honest review.