Monday 9 May 2016

REVIEW: Broken Sky by L. A. Weatherly

Pages: 500
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Usborne
Genre: Sci-Fi, Dystopia
Release Date: March 1st 2016
Buy The Book: Book Depository

Welcome to a ‘perfect’ world.

Where war is illegal, where harmony rules.

And where your date of birth marks your destiny.

But nothing is perfect.

And in a world this broken, who can Amity trust?

From the bestselling author of the Angel trilogy comes Broken Sky – an exhilarating epic set in a daring and distorted echo of 1940s America and first in a new trilogy.
 

My Thoughts:
Broken Sky follows seventeen-year-old Amity, a pilot for the World for Peace, an organisation set up by the government to handle all quarrels instead of having to go to war. Whenever there is a decision to be made with regards to land, oil rights, and so on, the WfP sends two pilots to the skies to battle it out. Although it is supposed to be a safe alternative to war, there are still causalities amongst the pilots. The fights are tiered according to importance, and the pilots aren’t aware of what it is they’re fighting for when they take off. 

Politician John Gunnison has started to grow in popularity, and so have his wild ways for governing based on astrology. He makes his people wear badges to display their star sign, and if the stars show that a person could potentially be trouble based on their traits, they’re labelled discordant. Whilst his visions have mostly been contained to where he governs, his rule is slowly starting to seep further across the country.

Amity’s father was a pilot before he died and now she has followed in his footsteps, helping to provide for her mother and younger brother Hal. Her childhood best friend, Collis, disappeared after her father’s death and she hasn’t heard from him since. Her world is shaken up when suddenly he reappears as a fellow WfP pilot. 

The concept for this story is awesome and offers plenty of exciting content, set in an alternative 40s with badass pilots and creepy astrology. So I loved the idea of the story itself, however I didn’t feel as drawn in by it as I wanted to be, and I don’t know why that was. Maybe I didn’t connect with the characters. Whilst I found the plot unique and interesting, I found Amity to be quite average compared to the rest if the story. There was nothing about her that really set her apart from other characters in YA series’. The plot also became a little predictable at times. 

The villain in Broken Sky, Gunnison, is completely chilling. At first I wondered whether or not he genuinely believed in the astrology he was throwing at his citizens, or if it was simply some ploy for power, but his faith is very real and very terrifying. The story follows Amity in first person, and switches to third person for a character named Kay. She is someone who is trying to get herself into Gunnison’s inner circle of astrologers. Her side of the story was fascinating and she’s a character I’m eager to learn more about. 

Whilst I enjoyed the story enough to keep reading, I found it slow at parts and wasn’t utterly sucked into the story until the final few chapters. The ending was incredible, with a fantastic plot twist that I didn’t suspect until a few pages before it was revealed. It’s that twist ending that has made me excited to read the next instalment in the series, it’s just a shame that it wasn’t until the very end of the book that I really started to get excited about it. 

Royal Rating:
 

 

1 comment:

  1. I'm really iffy about dystopian. I like the genre but people tend to write the same story with the same characters too often in this genre. Hmm, this might be a pass. Thanks for sharing your review!

    ReplyDelete

< > Home
emerge © , All Rights Reserved. BLOG DESIGN BY Sadaf F K.