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Mikaela Everett

Autor de The Unquiet

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The Unquiet (2015) 72 copias

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Review courtesy of Dark Faerie Tales

Quick & Dirty: A haunting, provocative debut that shocked me in the best ways.

Opening Sentence: I have been a cottage girl for eight years now.

The Review:

There are two earths. They have always communicated; people talk with their alternates regularly. Until blood and smoke stain the sky. Until people start disappearing into thin air. Until the Silence begins and communications end. Only one earth is surviving while the other deprecates and dies. Lira’s world is not winning, which is why she is taken. She, along with other children that have been sold to the cause, are dropped through portals into the other world. There, they are taught the brutal reality of what it means to be a sleeper.

They kill their alternates and take their places, and they wait for the war to truly begin. They hide in plain sight, doing simple tasks like helping to supply other sleepers with weapons and assistance. Lira is convinced of her inadequacy. She never can seem to see black and white, and the gray area is where she gets lost – traitorous thoughts of innocence and rebellion slip into her mind. No matter how she tries to convince herself otherwise, she’s not emotionless, and over the course of many years, her story is told.

Lira was one of those characters whom is absolutely depressing to read from. She is caught up in something that has forced her out of innocence too early. She is traumatized by the things she does to survive in the harsh reality she was born into. She follows her world’s orders, to the best of her ability, but it is costing her more than she knows. And yet, she is not the perfect sleeper: she thinks of things like love and rebellion, topics that are unthinkable, topics that could get her killed by her own people. I was swept away in her emotions and caught up in the tangle of her thoughts. The writing style is beautiful, and often flows like a stream of consciousness. It was completely unique.

“I have to believe that somehow, somewhere, there are worst monsters in the world than me.”

The love story snuck up on the reader, but when it came, it did not eclipse Lira’s story. I liked that it played a major role without overcoming other, more important facets – the plotline, Lira’s introspection. So many themes were at play in this book and they clashed in a way that somehow turned out beautiful. I won’t lie, the science fiction aspect was brushed off of, and the world building was slippery, but that was layered over by more valuable aspects. I love how this story did not stick to a typical good vs. evil archetype: Lira is not a hero. She is, at many points, the antagonist rather than protagonist of the story. It gave such an interesting, thought provoking perspective.

“In the end I don’t know which lies are worse: the lies we tell ourselves in the dark or the ones we pretend to agree to.”

This book was haunting. It absolutely broke me. It’s a book that focused on such a gritty, harsh reality, and the emotions of the characters are raw. It was left open-ended, in the best way, and readers are left with only their imagination. The endings of the characters that we had invested ourselves in so much are left unsure. Somehow, that works for this book, don’t ask me how. I think that this novel is not for someone looking for a quick paced, action packed science fiction. It is more character-based, but its thought provoking quotes and gorgeous writing made it a winner to me.

Notable Scene:

They won’t pass the testing. It is the most excruciating examination any of us will go through, designed to weed out our mistakes and to eliminate those who are not up to par. They do not have even the slightest hope of passing it.

Margot and I refocus our eyes on the books, both of us shaking our heads in disgust, both of us silent.

Love is what they have. The people of this Earth. Not us. Look how weak it has made them.

FTC Advisory: Greenwillow Books/HarperTeen provided me with a copy of The Unquiet. No goody bags, sponsorships, “material connections,” or bribes were exchanged for my review.
… (más)
 
Denunciada
DarkFaerieTales | otra reseña | Nov 18, 2015 |
Child Assassins & Parallel Earths? Sign Me Up!

(Full disclosure: I received a free electronic copy of this book for review through Edelweiss. Trigger warning for violence, including child abuse, domestic violence, and sexual assault.)

How do you climb back into the sky when you have already fallen from it?

"Let me be weak and know my flaws. Let me love and be afraid. Let me be foolish and sad, so that I can say I was strong. I was beautiful. I was a fighter. I was fearless."

Mikaela Everett's debut novel is out of this world - literally. The universe of The Unquiet is home to two Earths, Earth I and Earth II: the original and its alternate. ("Duplicates" is the PC term.) Each planet looks the same - mirror images of one another - and yet, on an individual basis, they offer two ways for a single story to play out (to paraphrase Lirael). John Smith might be a happily married accountant with a dog, two children, and a suburban bungalow on Earth I, while his alternate, having chosen a different path in life, is a struggling musician with a trail of broken hearts in his wake.

Your alternate is very much like you, but also not; twins raised separately, worlds apart. The ultimate cosmic experiment in nature versus nurture.

Upping the intrigue factor, these mirror earths are very much aware of one another. For a long time, their mutual existence was a source of wonder and awe. At four years of age, every citizen was entered into the interplanetry registry; shortly thereafter began the monthly satellite convos with your alternate. Not just a way of satisfying one's curiosity, the meetings were meant to impart a feeling of contentment; a way of learning where those roads not traveled might have led. Over time, many people grew attached to their alternates; they became like family. Best friends. Other halves.

And then came the Silence. Communications were abruptly cut off, by mutual agreement. Earth I meant it as a "period of good faith"; a time to cool off, as it were. Tensions were rising. The universe, thrown into disharmony by the twin earths, entered a period of upheaval. It started weeding out the extras: stars, houses, roads, seas. People began disappearing in anticlimactic "poofs!": now you see him, now you don't. The Silence was meant to be a standstill while the leaders of Earth I and II figured out what to do. Except Earth II already had a plan - and had begun implementing it years before.

"We didn't agree to the Silence because we wanted to think about how to fix things. We agreed because we did not want them to know the truth: that our planet was collapsing on top of us. That the universe was literally choosing between every man and woman in the worlds, and ours was the one chosen to go, to die, to disappear.

"We agreed because we did not want them to see what we were doing. What we were planning. Whom we were choosing."

With just one habitable planet between them, the leaders of Earth II are planning a coup: infiltrate the original earth, murder all its inhabitants, and replace them with their alternates. For that, they need boots on the ground: soldiers. Sleeper agents.

For years, Earth II has been training people - adults and, later, children - to assume the identities and lives of their alternates. When they're ready, the agents are sent to Earth I through one of the nine existing portals. They are assassins and spies; sons and mothers. The worst of them - the most expendable - have been sapped of all their humanity, programmed into hyper-nationalist killing machines. Dexter meets Hanna with a pinch o' Neil DeGrasse Tyson for geeky good flavor.

Lirael is, in many ways, the worst of the worst: she spent her early childhood in an orphanage in Paris, designed specifically to gather and groom potential sleepers. (Other kids were either volunteered by or taken from their parents as preschoolers, but Lira was part of the program from the very start.) At six, she was thrown through the portal; her first taste of Earth I was sea water: choking and drowning on the lifeblood of her new home. Along with one hundred other kids, she trained in the bunkers and cottages with Madame, studying footage of the "real" Lira and learning how to snap a man's neck with her thighs. By the time graduation day arrived eight years later, one third of them had vanished, reabsorbed by the universe. Snuffed out like Lira's humanity.

The defining point in Lira's reprogramming came when, at ten years old, she fell from a tree and broke her arm. Rather than sympathy, Madame gave her a thinly veiled threat. The gist of it: friends are a liability, and carriers (sleepers-in-training) are expendable. Not wanting to get her friends killed, she orchestrated a Harry and the Hendersons-style breakup with Edith, Gray, and Alex, cutting them loose for their own good (or so she thought).

Four years have passed since "the tree incident," and Lira has been a good little soldier. She passed her examination, though she failed Madame's cruel, impromptu goodbye test. Now that's she's situated in the other Lira's life - living in the country outside of Paris with her grandparents, who own an orchard, and her six-year-old sister, Cicely - she should feel...well, ideally nothing. That's kind of the point; sleepers are meant to be cold and empty; mechanical in their ability to carry out orders. And she is. But there's a surprising amount of down time in Lira's work, time she wasn't counting on. Time to think. And she's not the only one.

When Lira runs into her old friend and cottagemate Edith on the street, she finds herself pulled back into the group - and a potential Resistance against the sleepers. As she begins to form attachments - to Ceciliy, Da, and Gigi, the family she never had; to Jake, an ailing sleeper and possible ally; and to her long-abandoned friends - Lira begins to reconsider the morality of what they're doing. Why should the people of Earth I be the ones to die? After all: "We are the worst versions of them."

The Unquiet is just amazing. The writing is on point; the many plot twists had me white-knuckling my Kindle; and the character development is really just fascinating. Lira's conscience comes and goes in spurts and dribbles, almost as fickle as the sun's rays on her home planet. Just when you think she's making some headway - ready to commit to the Resistance, for example, or finally accept Jack's offer of friendship - she regresses, though not always in the worst way possible. (Sometimes, but not always.)

For all story's potential for violence and gore (and there is a fair amount), this is a surprisingly introspective book. Lira's inner dialogue is reminiscent of Dexter Morgan's struggle to find the humanity hidden deep within his serial killer core, especially as he transitioned from being a fake family man to a real father with the birth of Harrison.

I loved Lira's relationships with Jack and Gray. The fact that there would be a romance was predictable, but the way it came about was anything but. And the end? Hoo boy! That ending. Dark and dystopian, but with a small glimmer of hope: just the way I like it.

I also kind of loved that Lira's real parents worked at the circus. I've read an almost ridiculous number of carnival-based books this year (Menagerie by Rachel Vincent; The Gracekeepers by Kirsty Logan; The Book of Speculation by Erika Swyler; Church of Marvels by Leslie Parry; The Weight of Feathers by Anna-Marie McLemore; The Wanderers by Kate Ormand), and was more than happy to add this one to the list...kind of. Though it's a minor detail that isn't revealed until the very final pages, Lira wouldn't be here if the universe hadn't swallowed up her parents' show. Let's call it circus-adjacent, okay? (And hope that the mirror circus is animal-free, mkay?)

http://www.easyvegan.info/2015/10/12/the-unquiet-by-mikaela-everett/
… (más)
 
Denunciada
smiteme | otra reseña | Sep 17, 2015 |

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Obras
1
Miembros
72
Popularidad
#243,043
Valoración
½ 4.3
Reseñas
2
ISBNs
5

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