Thursday, August 1, 2013
Lets see...how do I start this review... Brilliance. It was brilliant? haha that was cheesy, but really it was a phenomenal book. It is nothing like anything I have read or watched before. Some people relate it to Heroes, but honestly I don’t see it at all.
The book is kind of a “what if” scenario in my opinion. You know how some people with autism have these amazing abilities for certain things? That is kind of like what the abnorms in this book are. They don’t really have super powers or anything, they are just really awesome at certain things. So basically these “twists” or “abnorms” kind of just naturally through genetics start to appear in society. These people have the ability to recognize patterns in people or numbers to the extreme, and therefore can tell what you are thinking or about to do based on body movements or lack thereof, or can slip into a building unnoticed. These people are “different” and eventually these people start causing problems in our current world. The stock exchange is cracked by a twist and has to be shut down and other similar bad things happen. The world has to change, and change quickly in order to accommodate for these new circumstances. As we all know people are not very good with change, and blame this new group of people for all the bad in the world. This leads to a split in societal thinking, most norms feel that the twists do not deserve the same rights as them, and the twists start to revolt. Yes I know this is a very long description of what happens, but like I said it isn’t really like anything else so I don’t know how else to do it. Anyway the book follows a twist named Nick Cooper who works for the government trying to find other abnorms who are posing threats against innocent people. Something happens to him, and his life is kind of turned upside down when he goes rogue.
Sakey does a wonderful job creating this realistic feeling alternate universe of our world. His writing grabs you and pulls you right into this world where you can really and truly feel for what all of the characters are going through. My only issues are within the time frame he chose to write in. He is writing the story during March and later of 2013, which would be fine if he stayed consistent with his historical references. He refers to the feelings of the United States when Pearl Harbor happened, but doesn’t even bring up 9/11. I don’t know if it irks me as much as it does because I can relate more to 9/11 than to Pearl Harbor, but I honestly was somewhat offended by this.
Other than that it was an amazing and original book. It is part 1 of a trilogy and so I am excited to find out what happens in the next 2 books! Unfortunately they will not be out for a while, so stay posted! Apparently it is also going to be adapted into a movie as well, so we will see how that goes.
