By Veronica Rossi
Aria has lived her whole life in the protected dome of Reverie. Her entire world confined to its spaces, she’s never thought to dream of what lies beyond its doors. So when her mother goes missing, Aria knows her chances of surviving in the outer wasteland long enough to find her are slim.
Then Aria meets an outsider named Perry. He’s searching for someone too. He’s also wild – a savage – but might be her best hope at staying alive.
If they can survive, they are each other’s best hope for finding answers.
I really wanted to like this book. Really did. And I just didn’t. Simple as that.
This story had a great concept, but it felt too big for its small pages. It really could have done with maybe 300 more pages to help everything not feel so rushed.
Looootsss of things are dropped onto the table at the beginning and it just felt like a mess. People living in virtual reality inside pods! Outsider savages! What the heck is the Unity? What is an Aether storm? What is Aether even? What is with these people having these weird gifts? The Still Blue?
So. Many. Things. Which isn’t necessarily bad. It just all felt rushed, unexplained, crammed, and messy.
However…
SPOILERS
The story moves rapidly from inside Reverie to outside (waayyy too fast). And then quickly from the Wasteland to Perry’s Village, back to the Wasteland, and on to the other home of their other allies (name I’ve forgotten, obviously made an impression upon me haha).
Once we get into the last third of the book, a bunch of ideas start coming out of the woodwork. And it’s those ideas (we found Talon! Reverie is under threat from DLS! Aria is half-Outsider!) that really make me actually want to continue reading this series. There’s some good material there that has a lot of potential.
END SPOILERS
I’m kind of overall meh on the characters. They were both kind of (okay, a lot) annoying at the beginning, but by the end they’re kind of decent. So maybe if that trend continues, I’ll end up with some characters I actually like.
Has you read the other books? What did you think? Worth continuing on with or no?
