{Synopsis} – I open my eyes to darkness. Total darkness. I hear my own breathing, but nothing else. I lift my head…it thumps against something solid and unmoving. There is a board right in front of my face. No, not a board…a lid.
A teenage girl awakens to find herself trapped in a coffin. She has no idea who she is, where she is, or how she got there. Fighting her way free brings little relief—she discovers only a room lined with caskets and a handful of equally mystified survivors. Beyond their room lies a corridor filled with bones and dust, but no people…and no answers.
She knows only one thing about herself—her name, M. Savage, which was engraved on the foot of her coffin—yet she finds herself in charge. She is not the biggest among them, or the boldest, but for some reason the others trust her. Now, if they’re to have any chance, she must get them to trust one another.
Whatever the truth is, she is determined to find it and confront it. If she has to lead, she will make sure they survive. Maybe there’s a way out, a rational explanation, and a fighting chance against the dangers to come. Or maybe a reality they cannot comprehend lies just beyond the next turn.
{My thoughts} – I have become a huge fan of dystopian novels. I have read quite a few over the years and to me sometimes it’s like the same story but it’s altered slightly different. I know you know what I mean when I say that. This book had been compared to the Hunger Games {I’ve read}, Gone and the Maze Runner. All those series have wonderful popular ratings, so I thought why not and decided I’d give the book a chance. I usually just pick up a book and start reading it not really caring about what it’s about, but lately I have been in a reading rut, so I wanted to read something that would pull me in and hold my attention. This book successfully did that.
The way in which this book is written makes it entirely unique in terms of other books I have read in the past. I enjoyed that the characters and the readers were both in the same boat. That neither had more information than the other. As I was learning things and turning the pages, the characters were learning the same things while turning corners, kind of thing. I was drawn to it. The description within the pages can be described as brilliant, disturbing, and questionable considering it is a young adult book about twelve year-old children in a sense. However, it is so well written that those things just add to the appeal of the story and the book, and to the characters and their presentation.
I honestly think, that this author did an incredible job writing this book and it would make an interesting film adaptation. I can’t wait to begin book two in this trilogy and find out what is in store for our characters.
{Quotes I Enjoyed} –
{01} – (If you run, your enemy will hunt you. Kill your enemy, and you are forever free.)
{02} – (Attack, attack, when in doubt, always attack, never let your enemy recover.)
{03} – “It doesn’t make sense,” she says finally. “We need more information. Until then, we have to believe what our eyes show us.”
{04} – Bello’s silent cry shifts to a quiet sob. Something about her tears suggests weakness (crying doesn’t fix anything), makes me want to scream at her to shut up, to stop it already. But I know she can’t help it.
{05} – “Maybe there aren’t any grownups,” I say. “If that’s true, then we will survive without them.”
{06} – I hesitate, knowing I am about to say something none of them want to hear. Saying it might make this real. Maybe I can’t remember anything, but I know that reality is what it is whether we like it or not.”
{07} – “If the grownups are really gone, well, then good,” I say. “We don’t need them. We don’t need someone else to rescue us…we can rescue ourselves.”
{08} – Aramovsky looks over his shoulder at her. “Really? And how do you know there aren’t monsters?”
“There just aren’t,” Spingate says. “Monsters are something only babies believe in.”
{09} – (If you run, your enemy will hunt you….)
{10} – I want to cry, but just like before the tears don’t come. Crying doesn’t fix anything, isn’t that what the voice in my head told me?
{11} – I don’t remember who I am or what I was, but in my heart I know nothing I did before could possibly make me feel this alive.
{12} – It says, choices have consequences. The voice is right.
{13} – My body, my mind and my spirit, they are all spent. I can’t think. I can’t even feel, and I don’t know if I will ever feel again.
{14} – Wishing won’t help, and crying doesn’t fix anything, because reality is what it is.
{15} – Why won’t someone come for us? Because… because we’re not loved. That has to be why. We are discarded. We are unwanted. Our parents, they left us in this nightmare. They left us alone.
{16} – Choices have consequences. We all own a piece of the blame-but only a small piece, because we wouldn’t have made those bad decisions if someone hadn’t put us down here in the first place.
{17} – “Sometimes it’s better to let people think what they want to think.”
{18} – “The failure is all of ours,” he says. “We have failed to give praise and thanks to the gods.” He gestures to the grave. “This is the price of failure.”
{19} – “Maybe some people are meant to walk up and face danger, while others are made to walk in back, where it is safe.”
{20} – (Kill your enemy, and you are forever free.)
{21} – “You might say that a journey of a thousand years begins with more than a single flightless bird.”
{22} – “A millennium’s worth of lies leads to a single truth-the future belongs to the young, if the old would kindly die and get the hell out of the way.”
{23} – “We are not going to defend anything,” I say. “We attack O’Malley. When in doubt attack, always attack, never let your enemy recover.”
{24} – We will not be used. We will not let them change us. They think we are property? They are mistaken.
{25} – I know what it feels like to take a life, to see the look of intelligence wiped away, to know I have forever ended a person.
Final Conclusion: 5 Star Rating.
