Series: The Elysium Chronicles #1
Pages: 352
Received: Received an E-copy from Raincoast Books in exchange for an honest reivew
Release Date: November 13, 2012Buy From Amazon.ca / Buy From Chapters.ca /
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Goodreads Synopsis:
Since the age of three, sixteen-year-old Evelyn Winters has been trained to be Daughter of the People in the underwater utopia known as Elysium. Selected from hundreds of children for her ideal genes, all her life she’s thought that everything was perfect; her world. Her people. The Law.
But when Gavin Hunter, a Surface Dweller, accidentally stumbles into their secluded little world, she’s forced to come to a startling realization: everything she knows is a lie. Her memories have been altered. Her mind and body aren’t under her own control. And the person she knows as Mother is a monster.
Together with Gavin she plans her escape, only to learn that her own mind is a ticking time bomb... and Mother has one last secret that will destroy them all.
My Review:
In the beginning everything seems perfect. Every person in Elysium is the perfect blonde haired, blue eyed specimen (Side note... why are blondes always the perfect ones, I object to this!) I was confused with things in the beginning (at one point I actually thought there was an issue with my ereader or the ecopy I had). Can't really say why but you will understand when you read it, I actually laughed at myself.
I did find the book to take some time to get into things, but once it did I was hooked on the story (the cover is very misleading in my opinion). Souders really gets into the idea of a perfect world and what lengths they will go to to keep everything as they imagine it. The world that Souders creates in this story is breathtaking and we get a lot of history detailing how this new world came to be.
The characters were definitely interesting in this novel, especially that of the Mother. I really enjoy these novels with an evil parent type. What I really enjoyed was that though you know she is evil there is a big part of her history that is revealed later on, that really makes you see things a little differently. It was interesting to learn more about this new world. I loved Evelyn, the girl on the cover makes you think that this is a very peaceful and naive girl, but Evelyn is nothing like that. She is strong-willed and very smart, and there is a whole secret history to her as well.
The romance is the main part I was not sure about, there is this idea of only certain people being able to "mate" with one another because they want the perfect genes and there is this whole genetic matching thing (which is interesting, and yet disturbing to me..) But the romance between Evelyn and Gavin (the "Surface Dweler") seemed to be one of those instant romances (I have heard from some people that it could also be seen as more of a romance for necessity because of the danger [If you've read the book, what do you think?])
The ending of this book was perfect in my opinion, after everything Evelyn goes through to see what happens to her at the end was amazing and I definitely can't wait to see where Souders is going to take this story next. This book was so much fun to read, and after a few chapters was definitely heart pounding with everything that happens. The cover makes this book seem a lot more girly than it really is. This is a book full of action scenes (some which are actually kind of gruesome at times).
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