Atlantia by Ally Condie Publisher: Dutton Children's (2014)
eBook (368 pages)
Via: Library
Rating:
Reading Challenges: Read 2015
Synopsis
For as long as she can remember, Rio has dreamt of the sand and sky Above—of life beyond her underwater city of Atlantia. But in a single moment, all her plans for the future are thwarted when her twin sister, Bay, makes an unexpected decision, stranding Rio Below. Alone, ripped away from the last person who knew Rio’s true self—and the powerful siren voice she has long hidden—she has nothing left to lose.
Guided by a dangerous and unlikely mentor, Rio formulates a plan that leads to increasingly treacherous questions about her mother’s death, her own destiny, and the complex system constructed to govern the divide between land and sea. Her life and her city depend on Rio to listen to the voices of the past and to speak long-hidden truths.
Find the book: Goodreads, Amazon, Book Depository
I know this has been said more than a hundred times, but this book is NOT about mermaids. I knew that before I borrowed this book from the library and yet I still expected mermaids from the title and the cover. So, there are no mermaids but there are sirens.
I love the concept for this book. An underwater city where people live basically in a bubble. That is cool. I would have loved a story about characters in this world except they didn’t want to stay. They wanted to go Above even though everyone who goes Above dies. I did not get that at all.
Then there is Rio. As a character, I didn’t care what happened to her. And Bay as well. It seems like as an audience we are supposed to care about Bay. I didn’t know anything about her. Rio has these memories of her that we get glimpses of but to me it feels as though Bay is just avoiding talking to her sister, telling her what is going on. It doesn’t seem like Bay really cares about Rio. And I really didn’t care what happened to either of them.
So Rio is supposed to be a siren. However, what exactly a siren is and how they came to be was never fully explained. It just happened. That kind of threw me out of the story. I like to know the why behind what happened. I just didn’t get that about the sirens.
I was really just bored and didn’t care one way or another what happened to the characters. Sure it was entertaining at points but not really enough to keep me really interested. I finished the book because I can’t not finish books. My sister might like this book because she enjoyed Matched more than I did. It just wasn’t a book for me.
Which Reading Challenges?
- You Read How Many Books? Reading Challenge
Leave a Reply