Early Review: Blackout by Robison Wells
Review courtesy of Dark Faerie Tales.
Quick & Dirty: A fast paced post apocalyptic story with an interesting premise, but too many different POV’s. I got a little lost at times and had a hard time connecting with the characters.
Opening Sentence: My stupid friends are nothing but power struggles and politics.
The Review:
A mysterious virus has spread throughout the United States and it is only affecting teenagers. The changes it makes are different for everyone. Anyone that has caught the virus has developed some type of super power. Some are useless like being able to blow really hot breath, but others are amazing like being able to become invisible. On top of the virus spreading there is a huge terrorist attack happening all over the country. Small groups of teenagers have been trained and prepared to destroy certain land marks all over the country. The U.S. is in trouble and if they don’t do something drastic to stop the attacks they won’t survive for much longer. They will have to rely on some of the most unlikely candidates: unpredictable teenagers with superhuman powers.
This was told from at least four different POV’s; it could have been more, I lost count because there were so many. But some of the main characters were Laura, Alec, Aubrey, and Jack. Laura and Alec are part of the terrorist groups trying to bring down the U.S. Laura is a built in body guard, the virus has made her have superhuman strength, speed, and endurance. Alec is the leader and plans all the next moves that his little group makes. He has the special ability to plant images into other peoples mind to make them do whatever he wants them to. One of their plans gets disrupted and they end up in a facility with a bunch of other infected teenagers.
One the other aspect of things is that Jack and Aubrey are normal teenagers living a normal life. Well, at least as normal as they can in this desperate time. They grew up together in a small town in Utah and have been friends their whole lives. A few months ago Aubrey realized she had the power to become invisible. Turns out that Jack isn’t as normal as he thought. All of his senses have heightened by 1000 times, he can see, smell, and hear from miles away. The army shows up and rounds up all the teenagers and tests them for the virus. Jack and Aubrey end up getting recruited to try and help save their country that is in desperate need of their help.
I enjoyed this book. It was a fun and fast read with a great premise. The story was interesting and very action packed. The plot had some good twists and the writing was very engaging. My biggest problem with this book was that there were too many different POV’s. It was really hard for me to get to know any of the characters very well because you were in so many different people’s heads; which made it really hard for me to connect with any of them. By the end, I felt like I knew each character pretty good, it just took the whole book to get there. Since this is a series I don’t think this will be as much of a problem in the next book, because I know the characters better now. There is a pretty good cliffhanger at the end and I am interested to see where Wells takes the story. I would recommend this to anyone that enjoys an action packed post apocalyptic read.
Notable Scene:
Twenty yards from the teens, the guardsman raised his rifle. “Hey, get over here.”
Hurry up. Alec could fill the soldier’s head with false memories, but he couldn’t quickly override the soldier’s deeply ingrained training to follow orders.
Laura dropped the rope and held up her hands, but Dan didn’t move. An alarm was sounding now, and Private Diamond stopped, training his rifle on the two teens.
“Turn around,” he barked.
Dan ignored him.
There was a sharp crack, and for an instant Alec thought Diamond had pulled the trigger. But the sound was much louder than a gunshot, reverberating off the canyon walls and shaking the ground under their feet. The face of the cement was splintered with a thousand tiny cracks and a thin cloud of dust burst skyward.
“You have three seconds,” Diamond shouted.
The radio was screaming at him to fire.
That was all Alec needed. If no one else was firing at Dan, then there weren’t snipers. The voice on the other end of the radio was probably inside the dam itself, watching the four of them on security cameras. They’d be feeling the real impact of what Dan was doing.
Alec pulled the private’s sidearm from the holster. There wasn’t even time for Diamond to respond before Alec fired three shots into the soldier’s neck and head.
The dam rumbled, deep and grinding, knocking Alec to his knees.
Ahead of him he saw Dan try to stand, wobbling on weak legs. It was finally Laura’s turn. She grabbed Dan and slung him over her shoulder as easily as if he’d been a stuffed toy. She ran toward Alec and the visitor’s center.
FTC Advisory: HarperTeen provided me with a copy of Blackout. No goody bags, sponsorships, “material connections,” or bribes were exchanged for my review.(