Book Review #1

Since it's still fresh in my mind, I thought I'd treat you all to my first official book review. Today I shall be reviewing:

Unwind by Neal Shusterman

And since I'm one of the overly-anal organizational freaks, I will split this review into five sections: Summary, What I Liked, What I Didn't Like, The Overall Mood Said Book Left Me In, and The Overall Rating. The Overall Rating will be based on what I have dubbed "Sara's Scale of Suck or Soar," which is determined as follows, lowest to highest:

Level 1: This is How Not to Write a Book
Level 2: What Editor Read this and said "Hmm, Let's Publish it"?
Level 3: My Faith in Writers is Wavering Precariously
Level 4: This Doesn't Suck
Level 5: I'd Read the Sequel
And the coveted Level 6: Fan-FREAKING-tastic. Buy at All Costs.

Questions? Then let's dive right in!

Summary: Normally, with post-apocalyptic stories, they veer one of two ways. Some have a huge build-up involving massive world-wide panic and devastation, only to leave you with an ending in which the protagonist saves himself and maybe a few others while the entire world is still brewing in hysteria (and the protagonist, however brave he seemed, is okay with just saving himself and a few others). Then there are books that build up and deliver. Unwind was neither.

The world you enter into is not far off from our modern-day society, showing no chaos. Order, in fact. Everyone is appeased. The war has just ended, a war between those who are Pro-Life and those who are Pro-Choice, with both sides going away happy. So, life is peachy, no? No. Of course not. Both sides are peachy because a procedure has been developed to allow parents or guardians to offer their children to be "unwound" between the ages of 13 and 18. "Unwinding" is a process in which the parts of these unwanted children are disassembled from the whole and given to those who need them. To transplant patients, to heart attack patients, to car accident victims. In theory, the entire body is used and the child never "dies," which is why both sides are appeased by this seemingly-innocent procedure. Enter Connor, Risa, and Lev, all up for unwinding for various (and rather intricate, in Lev's case) reasons. They become unwinding refugees and spend much of the book on the run from those who see them as criminals, as once they became Unwinds they became government property. Long story short: street smarts, theft, wittiness, bullies, strange Navy Admiral, air planes, desert, romance, a baby (not in that order), religious nut-jobs, and a piano.

That's enough summary. Now for the good stuff.

What I Liked: As I said above, Unwind didn't fit into either of the normal post-apocalyptic categories. It started off in a very familiar world: ours. The only difference was that seemingly-docile threat that Connor, Risa, and Lev faced of being unwound. Normally we know the threat, we know the enemy. This enemy, "unwinding," remained altogether allusive for the first 2/3 of the book. So, reading the first 2/3 of the book, I set myself up to be disappointed (post-apocalyptic scenario #1-ish). Shusterman had set up this allusive enemy that was supposedly destroying children country-wide, and would leave us with an unsatisfactory ending. The characters were only concerned with saving themselves; they would only end up saving themselves and would let unwinding as a whole continue.

Then I got to the last 1/3. And it was everything you'd hope a post-apocalyptic book's ending would have. At the risk of spoiling everything, I'll try to be vague. Connor, the main character of the three main characters, didn't realize he would end up being as important as he was. I think that's why I had such low expectations for the three mains to really affect change: they didn't want to. Their main purpose was survival. So when that change came around, and their world grew to be bigger than their three lives, I all but cheered. I really like it when authors exceed my expectations. I was so certain it would be one of those post-apocalyptic scenario #1 books that I almost didn't finish it. But I'm really glad I did.

What I Didn't Like: The writing style. There were a lot of choppy sentences, a lot of telling, a lot of middle-grade reading level stuff. If I wanted to read MG, I'd have a bought an MG book. This was another reason I almost didn't finish it; with the story kind of iffy through the first 2/3 of the book, then the writing style bogging it down even more, I was very close to shelving it. But once I got to that last 1/3, the story became so intense that I could ignore the writing style (and that's saying something). But is it entirely worth it to get to that last 1/3? If Shusterman could rock the last 1/3, he should've been able to rock the other 2/3.

The Overall Mood Said Book Left Me In: Chilled. There is one scene, one horrible, horrible scene, that will haunt me. I'm still nauseous from it. Suffice to say you finally get to experience, firsthand, what unwinding is. While I was reading the scene, I was torn. Torn between casting it off as an extreme view of what humans do and realizing that humans have already done this. So many times, in so many ways. Though the scene is from the point of view of a rather unlikable character, it is that point of view that makes it so much more horrific. This scene should have been at the beginning; if it had been at the beginning, and I had gone in knowing exactly what Connor and Risa and Lev were up against, it would have been much more powerful. Even though they never come to know exactly what it is like (thank God), just knowing what they are running from would make them all the more identifiable.

The Overall Rating: A few posts ago, I dubbed Unwind as a "doesn't suck" novel. Now, I am happy to say, it has moved up to Level 5: I'd Read the Sequel.