Potential for a grand adventure
First: the cover. The focus of the eye is on the word "Last" which gives the story a sense of finality and danger, but coupled with the simple and elegant design of the background, a potential reader doesn't know what to expect from the story. It encouraged me immediately to read the synopsis.
I was hesitant to see the story start off with lovers sneaking kisses in the dark. It's not something I was looking for right at the beginning - maybe developing over time to give some dimension to the characters - but by choosing to kill off the love interest so early, we've given our unlikely heroine a very strong and deliberate change of course. In our era of no character death, Condie's choice to boldly kill the first named character in her story, someone important to our narrator, has already enamored me to this story.
And then. moving on, Poe has bite. She's angry, she's solitary, she's obsessed. And I want to see where that determination takes her.
Condie utilizes short chapters and a lot of gimmicky sentence fragments common to the YA genre to give the readers a rhythm to keep them going. She brings to this, also, a few unique turns of phrase that stick out in one's mind as you glide through the pages. I find myself very much wanting to know where Poe Blythe ends up.
I was hesitant to see the story start off with lovers sneaking kisses in the dark. It's not something I was looking for right at the beginning - maybe developing over time to give some dimension to the characters - but by choosing to kill off the love interest so early, we've given our unlikely heroine a very strong and deliberate change of course. In our era of no character death, Condie's choice to boldly kill the first named character in her story, someone important to our narrator, has already enamored me to this story.
And then. moving on, Poe has bite. She's angry, she's solitary, she's obsessed. And I want to see where that determination takes her.
Condie utilizes short chapters and a lot of gimmicky sentence fragments common to the YA genre to give the readers a rhythm to keep them going. She brings to this, also, a few unique turns of phrase that stick out in one's mind as you glide through the pages. I find myself very much wanting to know where Poe Blythe ends up.