i thought it was really good ( )

Purchased this book because I thought the cover looked intriguing, and knew it would attract male readers. Unfortunately, the book takes forever to get into, isn't well written, and is much too violent for my tastes. I'm probably not even going to forward it to my high school... just going to toss it in the trash. Seven is a ten year old boy who has been raised to be a killing machine. It isn't really clear why there is a duplicate of him who gets to have a life, because the book makes it sound like there is just one body, and the body changes depending on what is needed, but Seven escapes and eventually rounds up all the other experiments who were considered failures. The book had great potential, but I just didn't enjoy it and found it too confusing. ( )

Perhaps I'm naive but I was surprised how graphically violent Subject Seven is. I assumed that a book labeled as Young Adult would not rival books marketed to adults in content and description. The main characters are teens, but other than that, I would not consider this a novel for young teens - teens that are almost adults are another matter.

The story itself was interesting. I found the multi-personality aspect unique, and after a few pages, I got into the groove of the narrative flashing from one personality to another. I wasn't able to love the book, for the fact that I didn't really like any character. Whether I was reading an alter ego narrative, or a "real" person narrative, I just couldn't root for anyone, and that makes it tough to care what's happening.

That said, I did care, sort of, because the story is super fast-paced and I was interested to find out what would happen in the end. Of course, this book is in the sequel-obsessed YA genre, and that means I won't know what actually happens at the end until the sequel(s) are released to wrap it all up for me. ( )

http://books.moonsoar.com/archives/2011/02/01/subject-seven/ ( )