Genre: Science Fiction/Dystopian/Suspense/Action
Book Rating: 7
Personal Rating: 6.5
I went into this book with really high hopes. I gave the first in this series five stars. This one well I was rather underwhelmed. The plot was still great. The writing is still excellent. Basically there is no real reason why this book should've failed. Yet it just did. Ultimately through all of the brilliance I just found I couldn't fall in love with the main character. I felt that I was supposed to sympathise with them and mostly just ended up being annoyed.
This book goes back in time while still being in the present. I found that to be the most interesting detail about this book. When I realised this I was very excited. It has a host of rather nice characters. The energy seekers amongst my faves. I honestly don't think they were crazy enough. Morray seems to have this aversion to them like they are weird but I find them just as easy to understand as him and the rest of the non-energy seeker crew. Their riddle speak was too clear for me to grasp why he just seemed to not understand.
Sarah was nice. Every good book needs a computer tech. I mean someone needs to be smart enough to match if not defeat the enemies technology. Drew. Well I never liked her but more on that later. Mrs. Morray understandable. All accept for why someone like her would ever marry Morray's father. Doesn't make a single bit of sense other than so she could have Morray hence allowing there to be a story.
Plot. Well no major flaws. Pacing went well plot twist and all came at the right moments. Action, basically this was a pretty badass book. Still it came down to the characters. Well one character in particular. Morray. I just couldn't run along with him for the ride. Drew was a close runner up in annoyance. I'm going to have to pull pieces at random here to avoid plot spoilers so lets picture this. You have been shot at. People assume your the enemy. You convince them you're not. Great. But the enemy is still out there, and you start screaming out someones name, Drew, hence endangering your crew and the friendly crew who had shot at you to begin with. Honestly I wanted to kill him. People are out to kill you. I don't care if it's the best sex you've ever had, shut the hell up.
Morray done so much of these things, a lot of them circling around Drew that made him seem crazy. The problem with his supposed single minded goal to take down his father was that it didn't quite work. His actions always made him appear to be exactly the same as his father. He only saw what he was aiming for and completely lost sight of the things surrounding it. I basically felt the whole book that he wanted to take down his father purely to show that he was better than him, or reach him so that he would finally love him. I never really felt for a second that he wanted to heal the world. Since I already read the first book, I knew he was a bad egg anyway but he felt like a bad egg the whole time. After the first few chapters I was feeling for him then once the new agenda started happening I saw where it was all going and it went there and I felt let down.
All the bad things that happened to him supposedly made him the way that he is, but the things he said, or done didn't hold enough of the compassion of someone good gone bad. For example, they take down a camp with the enemy in it. Naturally the enemy has families blah blah blah. He gets all mad and Innocent people killed blah blah blah. But then, no surprise, he's talking about creating the exact world he's supposedly stopping his father from making. The shame of it all is that his crazy obsession with Drew coupled with his lack of understanding of his mothers reaction to abandonment. How she dealt with life with his father, he hated him, so why wouldn't she? This and all sorts of things in his speech and reactions pretty much said he just wasn't altogether there long before the end of the book. I just couldn't feel his decline into madness. He never seemed like he was together to begin with. He was always on this hunt for approval he could never get.
The Drew plot. Unfortunately saw that the moment I first saw her. It was the same sorta thing that happens in a few stories. I wasn't shocked when the payoff came. Sarah, I liked her. A lot. She was great. Lillian, oh I really loved her. She was just totally amazing. Most of the outsiders were beyond lovable.
Morray was upset that his father paid little attention to him. Only saw him as this thing he created and devoted his entire life to creating the new city center and of course exterminating all humans deemed useless. Only had a few minutes with him on the off chance his father left his lab and nothing conspired during this time. Yet, and this is most definitely a plot spoiler, when he is faced with the decision to either be his father or not be his father he becomes his father. He has sex with someone and has the audacity to tell her, naked in his bed, that obviously you knew I was in love with Drew. Say what? You ejaculated into someone, called her by someone else's name. Didn't realise it and now she's all angry and when she tells you, you pretty much say well I thought it was obvious how I felt for this other chick. And this all happened way back in the beginning of the book. Honestly he was already an insensitive moron from the beginning. There was no real decline into madness. There's more though. Other than the fact he used his mothers affair with too much venom earlier on in the book. I couldn't buy the bitter teen route, he hated his father so did she, he coped by being rebellious and she actually found love. Where the hell was the mutual ground. Apparently they only tolerated him and was nice to him because he kept the secret. Sigh...
Okay so on to more. This was another plot point I saw coming a mile away but yes, this girl gets pregnant and his first thought is, how will this affect my relationship with Drew. You have got to be kidding me. You spent your entire living existence hatting a father that neglected you and your chance to be one has arisen and you don't even give it a second thought. Regardless of the fact the the person who informed you is trying to point out your priorities are out of whack. You stubbornly keep stressing over if you ruined your chances with Drew. It doesn't end here either. At the end when the mother of his child directly gives him the chance to again not be his father, he of course decides he wants to enslave the human population. Yes we all knew this was going to happen, but really? It's almost as if his heart was already gone way at the beginning of the book. When faced with these types of decisions he always done what I would expect his father to do. I just never felt he declined into madness he was always just like his father, and it was more a journey about him realising, well us the readers realising that he was always just like him.
That being said. I never felt for him. Was just annoyed by him. I never felt he really wanted to save the world. And him being the title role with out me actually liking him, I could not grow to hate him at the end of the book because I never really felt for him. I almost did but after the whole using his moms affair in the beginning and his contempt for energy seekers I just couldn't. I read an entire book expecting him to slowly go from loving mankind to the emotionless void in the first book. It never quite made it for me.
And it wouldn't have been so bad if it wasn't for Ava. How she finds out all the above info I really can't tell you. That's a plot spoiler even I Couldn't divulge. However, if she knew Morray hated his father for being too obsessed with work, making a better place for his child to live in. Then Morray himself doing exactly what his father was doing, obsessing over creating a better world for his child at Any cause, and now she has her husband telling her she's spending too much time hunting down Morray and she needs to take care of her own daughter. Her only response is that she is doing this for Grace. Seriously two people was enough, but three parents so obsessed with creating a perfect world that they neglect actually being parents. I would've never in a million years thought that Ava herself would make the exact same mistake after viewing all the evidence and knowing how Morray ultimately ended up in the first book. After dealing with him, and taking him down, she somehow thinks doing the exact same thing he did, work first, child second, which failed twice his father then him, would now somehow work for her? I see a big ball of resentment coming from yet another child and I haven't even picked up the next book yet. I"m really really really hoping that its not another repeat of the same parent child stuff in another book. That would really bug me if Ava doesn't get her act together.
So would I recommend this book. This book regardless of my rating is probably more than five star material. Especially in it's genre. I can't see myself not recommending it. It is brilliant. So the birth plot, and the betrayal plot I saw in another galaxy. The book is genius. Nothing bad I could say about it would diminish that. Hell I'd read it again. That is what this book dose. Create a world in which the characters, everything, breathes on long after the final page has been turned. And yes I did want to read the next book after this. So yeah. This book deserves to be read.
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