The Eye of Minds Review

After waiting weeks, I finally managed to get James Dashner’s new book. I was really excited to get it. I enjoyed The Maze Runner and I was hoping that this book would be just as good.

It was better.

The Eye of Minds by James Dashner is the first book in the new series The Mortality Doctrine. The second book is planned to be released in autumn of next year (Pulling a Rick Riordan, are you Mr. Dashner?). The book takes place in a sort-of futuristic setting where people are spending more time in the virtual work, VirtNet, instead of the real world. It’s one of those books that takes place mostly in a digital world where there is somebody hacking the system of harming people. I have seen this before, at least twice (though I can’t remember the first time I saw this per say), the second being in the Pendragon book The Reality Bug). But even though I have seen this type of setting, this book felt different to read.

Well, the book started off fairly regular. Somebody spending time in the VirtNet, except something weird happens. It’s the type of formula that has been seen before multiple times in multiple books. The book seemed fairly average until about halfway through, when things started to get good. I can’t say what happened because of spoilers, but things got dark and crazy and the book ended with a twist that had me wishing autumn 2014 would come a lot sooner.

Honestly, I just need to talk about the setting of this book. I feel like that is a huge part about what made this book what it was. It was brilliantly done, what with the line between what was fiction and reality. That line being a very, very thin line at times. The way that Dashner talked about the VirtNet made it feel like it could almost be real – like I could go to the corner of the room and there would be my “coffin” (a sort of container-type thing where a person laid while they accessed the VirtNet) waiting for me. And while sometimes the virtual world felt realistic, other times it was written to be very clearly digital. It was brilliantly done, and the book itself kept you, as the reader, guessing as to what was going on.

It wasn't very difficult book to read. Between books that I've been reading for school and some books I've been reading for fun that were a little more on the complex side, this book was an enormous relief for my mind. No, the plot was not obvious nor was it not complex, but there were no crazy symbolisms and there was no fancy language that was akin to Shakespeare. I managed to finish in only a few hours, which is something I haven’t been able to do with a book for a long while. And it was interesting enough to keep my undivided attention for said hours.

Overall, I’d give this book a four out of five. It was very well written, very interesting, and overall just a good read. I’d recommend this book to people who want a break from extreme fantasy or crazy sci-fi. This book is a bit of a cross between those genres, while keeping a very realistic element to it. Like I mentioned before, it isn't a very difficult book to read, but I wouldn't recommend giving it to someone under the age of 12. There are some dark elements that had even me slinking under my blankets once I turned out the lights.

Unwind Review

I apologise for not being able to post last week! On the night before I was planning on uploading, I had a giant essay to write that was due for IB English the next day. But I’m back again, and somewhat alive!

Dystopian books are starting to reach the level of being overdone and are a far too popular topic to write about. I, personally, am also not a fan of the genre. So when I went to pick up Unwind by Neal Shusterman at my friend’s request, I put it at the bottom of my “to read” pile. Once I finally got my bum around to reading it, I realised two things: The first being that this was an amazing book, the second being that I should really stop doubting my friend’s choice in books.

 

Unwind Cover. N.d. Photograph. Neal Shusterman: Unwind. Web. 25 Oct. 2013. <http://www.storyman.com/books/unwind.html>.

What stood out to me the most about this book is that it actually had a plot that I had never, ever, ever seen before. This is a very rare thing, and because of that, I was extremely shocked. This book is about a society where unwanted children, instead of being sent to jail or grounded or whatnot, were “unwound”. This “unwinding” consisted of taking the limbs and organs of the person (under the age of 18) and using those pieces to replace a limb or an organ of someone who needed it. This way, they got rid of the unwanted child without fully killing them and they saved lives. The book follows the perspective of three children who were sent to be unwound who managed to escape (or in one character’s case – was somewhat kidnapped) and were on the run.

This book has a very chilling effect on the read. The most shocking thing about this book is that it is so well written that it actually seems like it could be happening right now. Everything else in society is fairly normal like it is now, with the exception of unwinding and a few other minor details. Shusterman does an excellent job at portraying this concept without creating an entirely differently world in the process (cough–Gone–cough). It was a very shocking read and, to some extent, did change my perspective on the world once I had finished it.

The main characters, the narrators, also are very dynamic. The trouble with some books in this genre is that sometimes the authors put too much thought into creating this crazy, perfectly imperfect, dystopian society that they forget to write more about how a character changes. This book managed to capture this perfectly. And the fact that it changes perspectives from three different characters gives the reader a much broader understanding of different classes and groups during this time as well so there was nothing lost on the development of the setting and culture either.

On the downside, I did feel like this book did drag on just a bit in times. Yes, yes, it is difficult to find a book that doesn’t do this, but this was one of those books that couldn’t hold my attention enough to finish it in a couple of days given the time. There were some scenes that seemed to stretch on forever, and though that could have been intentional by the author to show how the characters were feeling about a situation, I personally just found myself shoving a bookmark in and moving to another book in the hopes that would keep my attention.

Overall, keeping personal opinions to the side about the genre, I would give this book a 3. Every detail of this society was well executed, and the characters were very well developed, but it did drag on quite a bit at times and there were some parts where I was questioning the sanity of the author. Unwind was a book that changed my perspective on life around me, and I would recommend this book especially if you are looking for a dystopian book that doesn’t exactly follow the formula.