“Reboot”
Author: Amy Tintera.
Publisher: Harper Teen (release date: May 7th
2013).
Pages: 352.
Summary (taken from Goodreads): Five years ago,
Wren Connolly was shot three times in the chest. After 178 minutes she came
back as a Reboot: stronger, faster, able to heal, and less emotional. The
longer Reboots are dead, the less human they are when they return. Wren 178 is
the deadliest Reboot in the Republic of Texas. Now seventeen years old, she
serves as a soldier for HARC (Human Advancement and Repopulation Corporation).
Wren’s favorite part of the job is training new
Reboots, but her latest newbie is the worst she’s ever seen. As a 22, Callum
Reyes is practically human. His reflexes are too slow, he’s always asking
questions, and his ever-present smile is freaking her out. Yet there’s
something about him she can’t ignore. When Callum refuses to follow an order,
Wren is given one last chance to get him in line—or she’ll have to eliminate
him. Wren has never disobeyed before and knows if she does, she’ll be
eliminated, too. But she has also never felt as alive as she does around
Callum.
The perfect soldier is done taking orders.
It’s no coincidence that the book “Reboot” is
being compared to most is “Divergent”. Indeed, this is a comparison that the
publishers must welcome. After all, “Divergent” is one of the few YA series of
the past few years that justified the huge amount of hype it received and
continues to dominate the NYT bestseller list. I believe its success is down to
two main elements: A great publicity campaign and a marketable central premise.
While “Reboot” has built up a significant amount of hype, particularly amongst
bloggers, the story just isn’t there.
In many ways, “Reboot” and “Divergent” are
incredibly similar. The reboots of the title, essentially an army of super
strong zombies controlled by the state, bear more than a passing resemblance to
the Dauntless of Roth’s world, including sharing a penchant for unnecessary
violence, something I’ll get to later. Romance plays an overwhelming role in
each story, far more than is really necessary, and the heroines both bugged me
to kingdom come. There is one main reason “Reboot” fails and it’s also similar to
“Divergent”, although the former is better written.
The plot holes are so large that I could
navigate the wreck of the Titanic through them. In this world, reboots are less
prone to emotions than humans. Wren, the heroine of the story, frequently talks
about having no emotions but will immediately follow that up with a description
of how she’s feeling. It reminded me of a moment in “Futurama” where Bender
talks about how as a robot he doesn’t feel emotions and that makes him sad. It’s
so blindingly obvious in its clumsiness, both in terms of prose and
storytelling, that I wonder how the editors could miss it. This becomes even
more distracting when Wren continues to insist that she is cold and
emotionless. She clearly isn’t, especially when she’s mooning over her dull and
very annoying love interest. The science of the reboots is messy and
haphazardly explained at best. I rolled my eyes a lot when Wren talks about how
dying and being rebooted automatically makes you more attractive, because
zombie soldiers need to be sexy for reasons unknown. I wonder if anything is
allowed to be unattractive in YA anymore when even the undead have to be sexed
up like this, especially when it has absolutely no bearing on the plot. Even
Stephenie Meyer briefly explained why her sparkly vampires all looked like GQ
models.
The action scenes are actually pretty well
written in terms of content and pacing, and they certainly outdo anything Roth
wrote in “Divergent”, but they’re few and far between and shoved into a plot
that is quickly dismissed in favour of romance. Callum, the cut-out love
interest of the day, is just too irritating. His humour falls flat too often
and he fails in his obvious objective of being the moral emotional core of the
story in contrast to Wren. He can’t be the emotional contrast to the cold
zombie when said cold zombie won’t shut up about her feelings. The supporting
cast failed to leave any impression on me and I can’t remember any of their
names.
I have a feeling the author was somewhat aware
of this emotional plot hole and decided to use violence as a way to counteract
it. Wren is bloodthirsty, to say the least. She has no qualms with essentially slaughtering
humans, and it comes across as rather gratuitous in the novel. She is
constantly talking about how she wants to kill humans and it felt a little too
serial killer in places. It certainly doesn’t endear you to the protagonist.
I think many readers will like “Reboot” a lot
and I certainly see its appeal as a possible movie (albeit one with some
serious script editing) but it fell flat for me. In terms of prose, it’s
stronger than “Divergent”, extreme bouts of info-dumping aside, but it also
exhibits too many of the problems of that series, particularly in terms of thinly
stretched world-building, characterisation, romance and the portrayal of
violence. I’m not entirely convinced this will be the hit that Roth’s series
has become. I would pass on this one and go watch the series of “Aeon Flux”
instead.
2/5.
“Reboot” will be released on May 7th
in USA. I received my ARC from Edelweiss.
