“In a solar system where The Authority decides who lives and who dies, only one of their own executioners can stop them.
Glade Io is a trained killer. Marked at a young age as an individual with violent tendencies, she was taken from her family and groomed to be a Datapoint-a biotech-enabled analyst who carries out the Culling. She is designed to identify and destroy any potential humans that threaten the colonies: those marked as lawbreakers, unproductive or sick. But when she’s kidnapped by rogue colonists known as the Ferrymen, everything Glade thinks she knows about the colonies, and The Authority that runs them collapses into doubt.
Pulled between two opposing sides, and with her family’s lives hanging in the balance, Glade is unsure of who to trust-and time is running out.”
“Interesting, Captivating but also Predictable”
This book was a good book and I have mixed feelings about it. It had all the themes that a lot of other dystopian books have looked into so because of this I felt that it wasn’t very original however the whole idea of a Datapoint was very interesting.
I love that the main character is so headstrong and does what she wants, strong characters are awesome to read. However, the main character Glade goes around and around in circles sometimes about being on the station and leaving her sisters behind on their home planet. This became quite annoying because she never realises that it doesn’t matter in the end if she’s there or no the authorities will end up taking them anyway. I mean her character is strong however I feel like her common sense is missing at the end of the day. The fact that this is continuously brought up in the book and she never listens or makes the connection herself made her an annoying character is some parts.
It felt like in some parts she became slow and foolish in parts of the book in order to benefit the storyline and what was happening in the book at the time. The other characters were written quite well and I really enjoyed the way that they interacted with Glade and each other throughout the book.
Certain parts of the content of the book could be left out and even stopped being repeated continuously. It’s great that the author wants to make a point to the reader about the things that are happening and the comparisons that are being made however the number of times this happens in the book it becomes overused and somewhat annoying. An example of this would be Glade’s comparison to the horse video that she had seen. It was a good comparison and I understood why it was made but it became overused and unneeded after being used a few times.
There was also a few parts of the book where the reading flow was disrupted due to the author telling us what is happening rather than showing us, especially when there were flashbacks or when Glade was referring to something in the past. It threw me off.
I enjoyed reading about the love interests and like the idea of the love triangle but the way that it was set up left it feeling obvious.
I think that in order to improve the book the author should work on making certain aspects less obvious, this will leave the audience reading longer and work on the characters especially Glade so that their personalities aren’t compromised because of the plot. I found that some characters ended up feeling different in some parts of the book which left me confused, their personalities changed and it was weird.
Favourite Quotes:
“Don’t look back, learn from the past, but don’t go back there. Move forward. Always be moving forward.
“The memory lit Oort with joy for a second, but it faded into sadness. A sadness I recognised. It was pain that came from remembering someone you loved. Someone who was gone, but when your love for them still burned. It was such a strange pain. When your heart kept growing love for someone but had nowhere to put it”
“Hide pain in plain sight. They can’t find you if they can’t see you”
“Something was rearranging inside of me. It was the mountain I call a heart. All the stones that had shaken loose during the Culling on Europa… I felt them gathering, finding their places again.”
“Something was rearranging inside of me. It was that mountain I called a heart. All the stones that had shaken loose during the Culling.”
Rating:
Overall I rate this book a ⭐️⭐️⭐️/5 stars. The book was an interesting dystopian read and I did enjoy it, there were just a few things that I picked up on that lowered my score of the book. I think I will end up reading the next one to the series just to see how the characters have ended up. The Culling has great potential and I hope that it improves as the author keeps writing.
Writing: ⭐️⭐️⭐️/5
Characters: ⭐️⭐️⭐️/5
plot: ⭐️⭐️.5/5
Originality: ⭐️⭐️⭐️/5
Acknowledgements: I received this book from NetGalley for an honest review!
Bec's Bookshelf 