teen fiction; yet another dystopic romance. Not bad, but after 83 pages or so, didn't stand out enough to make me want to continue. ( )

Ugh. I accidentally listened to this audiobook because I thought it was the audiobook version of Arc Light by Eric Harry.

This one was not horrible -- there's an interesting idea here, with a combination of nanotech, group dynamics, and post-apocalyptic life. The audiobook narration by Tara Sands is great. However, the first half of the book is mind-numbingly dull, and it's never really amazing. ( )

This book has an excellent premise -- a world divided between creatures who are "normal" and The Fade, creatures who are deterred by light. The Fade are introduced as evil but end up being more complex. All great. The action starts rights away and therein lies the problem -- as a reader, I didn't know or care about the characters at all, so there were no stakes in the action. Also, the characters weren't that interesting -- and there's very little to no humor. I'm beginning to see this as a broad failure in a lot of YA (and scifi and dystopia) -- this heavy, lugubrious, pretentious tone that makes all of the stories flatten. ( )

I do love my young adult dystopians, and when I started reading Archlight I was immediately impressed by Josin L. McQuein‘s writing style. It didn’t read like a dystopian at first, in fact it had a lot of elements that reminded me of Silent Hill‘s gripping fantasy horror world. Also, it didn’t immediately read like a Young Adult novel, but she soon got into the groove of things and a wonderfully unique dystopian was created. When it comes to the characters, I liked Marina – the main protagonist of the story – because she’s a bit off a bad-ass without really being a gun-wielding, knife throwing action hero. I loved Rue, because he’s got this mechanical ethereal beauty to him that’s described so well that I kind of started crushing on him. Oh, and don’t forget Tobin, who’s still slightly boyish, but incredibly protective of Marina. The only character that I couldn’t immediately place as friend or foe was Anne-Marie, but by the end of the book she redeemed herself well.

Arclight, in my opinion, would make a fantastic Japanese anime movie and would fit right beside King of Thorn and Another on the shelf. The Fade sounds so unreal yet so very probable with our developing technology that a live-action film simply wouldn’t do them any justice. But I’m getting ahead of myself again.

The book is superbly written, and although there were some editing issues, the reading wasn’t hindered whatsoever. I found the characters to be believable, but it’s the plot that truly hooked me. When Marina traveled with Rue back to the darkness though, McQuein kind of lost me for a while with the overly-descriptive chapters, but I pushed through the middle and before I knew it I was back with the action. By the time I finished the story and noticed that a second book is in the works (Meridian), I jumped for joy and put it onto my reading list. In other words, yes, if you like dystopians you’re going to love this book and you’ll want more.

Arclight isn’t like The Hunger Games, Divergent, Matched or Legend. Arclight is unique and the only similar story that I can think of to categorize it with is King of Thorn, and even then it’s a bit of a reach. However, that doesn’t mean this isn’t a spectacular book… I actually found it a breath of fresh air because of how original it is and I’d definitely advise all dystopian lovers to get it immediately. It’s really that good!

(review originally posted on www.tentaclebooks.com) ( )

Complete honesty here: I read this book because goodreads told me that if I enjoyed the Fifth Wave, I might enjoy this too.

And I did enjoy this.

But the reason I felt compelled to mention the Fifth wave Connection is because of one line from this book:

I'm both and neither in a single breath

and one line from the Fifth Wave:

I am other and I am you.

Out of context, I suppose those two sentences aren't too similar, but in context, they're uncannily alike.

Yeah. So, I'll pretty much review this book in context of the Fifth Wave.

This book WAS NOWHERE NEAR AS GOOD as the Fifth Wave.
But, let's be serious for two seconds. Nothing is anywhere near as good as the Fifth Wave.
This book was still really good.
The plot was very twisty and confusing and unpredictable. Big Plus!
The Characters were good as well.

One thing that I feel will be really memorable about this book is that, in the later half, the author tried to fit two different characters into the same narrator. Sort of like a split personality. I'm still trying to decide whether or not it was done well.

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