Imogen Howson
Genre: Science Fiction
Paperback: 427 Pages
Publication: July 8, 2014
by Quercus Books
Untold dangers await
telepathic twins in this sequel to the futuristic, romantic thriller
called classic sci-fi, space-travel adventure at its best. After Elissa
and Lin exposed the government’s secret experiments in Linked, which Booklistcalled a roller-coaster ride into space that just about everyone should enjoy, their home planet Sekoia is thrown into chaos. Determined to do their part to help the planet they’ve hurt, they return to Sekoia only to discover that things are far worse that they imagined. Resources are suddenly scarce, people are scared, and there’s a rising current of anger against the Spares. When Lissa and Lin find themselves among another group of Spares and twins, they feel like they’ve found their
kindred spirits at last. But a threat none of them could have expected is lying in wait for Sekoia’s Spares.
Unravel was a difficult book for me to get into. I didn’t feel that it had the action or development that I expected or thought it needed. Compared to the first book in its series, I was very disappointed. At the end of Linked, we saw that Lin, Elissa, and their allies were returning to their home planet with the intent of helping with all the problems going on there. Their homecoming doesn’t work out how they expected. They discover that Lin and Elissa are in danger just by being on the planet, and the authorities whisk them away before they have the chance to try anything. I found that part of the book particularly frustrating, primarily because Lis and Lin don’t fight to try and do something as much as I felt they should have.
Another thing that really bothered me about the book was just Elissa as character. In the first book, her naive view of the world and tendency to be overly emotional served as a balance to her psychopathic twin. In this book, it was just annoying and actually caused problems. For example, while they were sitting around unable to help with anything, she was so wrapped up in her emotions that it messes up her relationships with her boyfriend and her twin. If she’d only taken the time to try working through her feelings, she probably could have fixed a lot of problems early on.
I also had problems with how the book developed. It was very slow and constantly introduced more problems that the characters didn’t do much to fix. Additionally, not only is major problem that leads to the climax not introduced until the very end, the solutions to all the problems isn’t actually presented to us. It happens during a time skip at the end, and Lin and Elissa aren’t even really involved. It felt a little like a deus ex machina plot device.
Still, the book did bring up some important issues. Part of the problem on their home planet was caused by the people’s view of twins. Although the more correct term is “spares,” many people still refer to them as clones, which are generally seen as less than human, and this helps contribute to all the attacks and general discord. If the people were able to see the twins as other humans who were victims, things would get better.
Overall, despite the fact that I enjoyed the first book, I wouldn’t recommend this book to people. I didn’t like the how the characters dealt with their problems and wasn’t very happy about the plot. I wasn’t impressed with how this book turned out.
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Amber Elise says
Ah boo, sorry you didn't like this one Gwen, especially since you really liked Linked. I have Linked but I have been putting it off for a while.
Pacing is something that will either make me devour a book in a day or a month so I completely understand why it turned you off to the book.
Oh well, there are better books out there (thankfully).
Thanks for your review!
Amber Elise @ Du Livre