Review: Good Book
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 12 17, 2013
I've definitely been on a young adult dystopian kick lately. Hunger Games, The Testing, that Harlequin Teen book that I can't remember the title of but reviewed here and loved, and now Contributor.While the book doesn't blaze any new paths or offer any uber-big surprises, it's still a well-paced, interesting book that I happily lost myself in for a couple of hours. It didn't hurt that I'm partial to the name Dara. Heh.There was some pretty sturdy world-building here, which is of course necessary when doing a dystopian. It wasn't made particularly clear how the big disaster happened, but something definitely went vercocky, considering the bulk of the survivors now live in domed cities. And I really liked the whole domed city thing. The one thing that left me a little confused was I didn't fully understand what a Creator was. I got the Job Creator, as in the corporations (heh - considering how much the political scene squawks about big, bad, evil corporations, I found it cool that the corporations pretty much run things), but not a Creator. How did one become a Creator, rather than a Ballast (essentially white-collar workers), Core (menial labor), or Root (exiled from the domes)?Dara was solid. She had some pretty rough stuff thrown at her, especially when her mom is badly injured, and that injury is the catalyst for her development toward disenchantment with the system as a whole. I liked Letizia (her mentor/master at Magnum Corporation). And lemme say, I hope I never have to deal with competitors for a job like Dara did for the job she had in engineering.I'm going to look up the next book in the series and I definitely think it's worth your time to read this book. I hope you'll check it out.Thanks, Ms. Ciacchella!Book provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.