Friday 19 October 2012

Wither

I have serious issues with this genre and I wonder why I keep torturing myself reading dystopian books in the vain attempt that I might actually enjoy them. The world building in all dystopian books is the same. A carefully controlled society, a huge amount of regional disparity and there's also some ridiculousness unique to each dystopian book.  But after seeing the amazing ratings Wither was getting I decided to give it a try, though for me it turned out to be a complete waste of time.
Despite the obvious problem of the super bad world building the main characters weren't likeable either. First let's talk about the world.

The world in Wither is so jumbled up. All the continents are dead except North America? Now this makes no sense to me. There are three generations of humans. One's perfect while the second and third die in their twenties. OKAY, I'll try to ignore how ridiculous this sounds. No, seriously reread that! It's absolutely absurd. But if things are really that bad why are people just going on with their lives. Why isn't there any panic and chaos? Sure some terrorism was mentioned (like the lab blowing up) but all this is in the background. The wealthy people just go on to live in their pretty estates, attending festivals and wedding and parties. That is just so unrealistic.

The main character, Rhine was also really flat. We know NOTHING about her except that she wants to escape from Linden's mansion. Gabriel and Linden, the two major male characters also got the same reaction from me. I did not like them, I did not hate them. They were just there.
However I'll give the author credit for creating two awesome, believable and relate-able characters Jenna and Cecily. There were times when I was annoyed at Jenna's melancholy but she proved to be a completely selfless person. Same goes for Cecily. At the beginning I hated her and her childish ways but as the story went on I really came to love her and in the end actually felt sorry for the foolish little girl that had been lost.

Another problem I had was the lack of action in the story. It just went on and on about how they were living in the mansion. The dress ups , makeovers , the parties. It was just so boring.
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