Aria has lived in a Pod her entire life, in a protected virtual world where nothing bad can ever happen to her. Seriously. Fingernails aren't even allowed to grow too long. Split ends? Say it isn't so! Fever? Blasphemy. It's a perfect world...or is it? When Aria gets kicked out of her Pod, and into the real world, or what is called the "Death Shop" (and let's face it, that is a very accurate term), she teams up with a "Savage" outsider Perry to find her missing mother and to survive the dangerous forests and deserts of the outside world.My feelings were mixed about this book. And no, it's not just because I can be a slightly emotionally complicated person. It's because I didn't warm up to the story until a little more than halfway through the novel. There were two reasons. One, it took me a long time to get into the swing of the futuristic lingo. What does "Aether," 'Sciri" 'Scent,' 'Pod,' 'Dweller,' 'Smartkey,' and so forth mean? I dislike it when you have to re-read pages over and over again to try and figure out what the author is conveying. Make it simple, please. Assume your audience isn't a technological genius and move on from there. Second, the main characters were very dark and non-relatable until they started showing their personality. Little glimmers of humor or humanity, so to speak, was when I really started to enjoy the story. When Roar - a funny supporting character - jumped in, the conversation kicked off and things got more interesting. So what am I really saying here? I liked this book. Definitely. But it wasn't my cup of tea until the halfway point.
Aria has lived in a Pod her entire life, in a protected virtual world where nothing bad can ever happen to her. Seriously. Fingernails aren't even allowed to grow too long. Split ends? Say it isn't so! Fever? Blasphemy. It's a perfect world...or is it? When Aria gets kicked out of her Pod, and into the real world, or what is called the "Death Shop" (and let's face it, that is a very accurate term), she teams up with a "Savage" outsider Perry to find her missing mother and to survive the dangerous forests and deserts of the outside world.My feelings were mixed about this book. And no, it's not just because I can be a slightly emotionally complicated person. It's because I didn't warm up to the story until a little more than halfway through the novel. There were two reasons. One, it took me a long time to get into the swing of the futuristic lingo. What does "Aether," 'Sciri" 'Scent,' 'Pod,' 'Dweller,' 'Smartkey,' and so forth mean? I dislike it when you have to re-read pages over and over again to try and figure out what the author is conveying. Make it simple, please. Assume your audience isn't a technological genius and move on from there. Second, the main characters were very dark and non-relatable until they started showing their personality. Little glimmers of humor or humanity, so to speak, was when I really started to enjoy the story. When Roar - a funny supporting character - jumped in, the conversation kicked off and things got more interesting. So what am I really saying here? I liked this book. Definitely. But it wasn't my cup of tea until the halfway point.