As the page turns..

(buddy read with Hooked on Books)
The first book of the trilogy introduces us to the land of Internment: a floating piece of Earth. That element alone made me want to read this book and I was not disappointed!

The story takes place on this floating city, where a long list of rules are enforced to its citizens. One girl's murder will question the beliefs of our heroine Morgan, who has to deal with her own family drama.

The story was a bit slow in the beginning, but it was very engaging. Overall, I found the descriptions of Internment to be excellent: I could picture myself living on a floating island, where instead of water, all I could see was sky and clouds all around me. Like I said, the setting was highly intriguing and makes this book a bit more unique than all the other dystopian ones out there.

It wouldn't be a dystopian story, however, without the proper amount of negative elements: here is the restriction of one's freedom. You might be able to choose any career you fancy, but there are rules about how long you'll live, when you'll have children and of course with whom you will spend the rest of your life with. The edge of this "world" holds a great appeal to people who don't want to continue living like that. It sort of lures them to jump with nothing but dreadful consequences: if they don't die, they suffer from a physical impairment. (They won't land on earth and die because the winds around Internment are so strong that make them jump back up.)

Things will start to change when this "safe" place is no longer safe. A teenage girl is found murdered. This level of violence is highly unusual and the suspect must be found. The story's protagonist is another teenage girl, Morgan, whose brother is a jumper. He tried to jump unsuccessfully and the price he paid was his eyesight. And the edge calls to Morgan too...

"Every star has been set in the sky. We mistakenly think they were put there for us."

Every chapter begins with parts of the deceased girl's essay. She wrote about her land questioning their practices and their belief system. I loved these bits as they were very poetic: (they were also constantly highlighted, as I think most of them are general truths)

"As a child, I trusted the god in the sky with decisions like life and death. It wasn't until I began studying medicine that I learned these are decisions made by humans. Flawed humans - as though there are any other kind."

 

"With free will comes inevitable error and misjudgement."

These quotes remind me of Lauren Oliver's lyrical prose on the "Delirium" series. Lauren DeStefano's writing was almost as good as Oliver's.

I can't wait to read on these series and find out the rest of Morgan's tale..