Reboot by Amy Tintera
Genre: Apocalyptic, Sci-Fi, Romance, Action
Published by: HarperTeen
Pages: 365
Format: Paperback
Rating: ★★.5
Where to Find: Goodreads | Amazon

I’d wanted to read Reboot for a while, but was unsure on the premise, because it seemed like something I perhaps wouldn’t enjoy, however I was pleasantly surprised.

I thoroughly enjoyed Wren’s character development. She was dead for 178 minutes before she rebooted, which meant she was the ‘least human’, however I felt this was sort of forgotten. In the very beginning she seemed to have a wide scope of emotions, perhaps this was because she’d been conditioned by her roommate to be a little friendlier, but it would have made more sense for her to take on a more robotic personality. Wren is supposed to be one of the toughest Reboots, because of her number, but when it comes to training a new Reboot, she picks Callum, the 22, when she normally goes from the highest number available. Without reading the blurb you knew this was where the romance was going to start, and it made for a very interesting dynamic as the pair are pretty much opposites…or so we think.

The majority of Reboot focuses on Wren training Callum to be more resilient, so that he’ll take orders, and therefore not get shot. It’s a brutal life, but then another layer is added to the story in the form of Reboot testing, and one of the characters to receive these injections is Ever, Wren’s best friend. In my opinion this is where the story really picks up, because Wren starts to realize that her life in the containment facility isn’t that great, and so the logical next step is, of course, escape.

Wren and Callum overcome a lot of difficulties in their escape, namely having to trust humans, planning how to get out in the first place, mourning the loss of friends and just generally trying to survive. Reboot ends on a cliffhanger so I made sure to pick up Rebel straight away. Other than learning about the world and the two main characters not a lot happens in Reboot apart from the testing conspiracy and their escape, so I set my expectations higher for the sequel.

Rebel by Amy Tintera
Pages: 340
Format: Paperback
Rating: ★★★
Where to Find: Goodreads | Amazon

Rebel is written in a dual perspective, and I have to admit that I didn’t really care for Callum’s point of view, because Wren seemed to have the more action packed sequences.

One thing that did surprise me is how they stick together through thick and thin, and they’re always working to get back to one another. There’s no ‘save yourself, because I love you’ it’s ‘we need to get out together, because I love you.’ They managed to escape to a compound build by Reboots who then help them, but they have their own agenda. Micah, 163, understands Wren’s potential so some panic and Rebellion ensues.

What more could we expect from the title of this book. It was fast paced and answered the majority of the questions that I still had left over from Reboot. More importantly, things were rounded off nicely, and Wren finally came to the conclusion that she wasn’t a monster, and justice was served. On the other hand I do feel that this book was almost like a waiting game. Again, there was a lot of preparation for the next step and then the step after that. More new characters are introduced, such as Isaac, and I’d be really interested to have had chapter or excerpts from his perspective.

As much as I did like this duology, I was expecting more because of the fantastic premise. I didn’t find myself becoming attached to any of the characters in particular, and although I did feel sympathetic towards their situation so me things felt more forced than others, and with a bit of communication a lot of their problems could have been solved. These books dealt with issues like prejudice extremely well, but even so I wanted a clearer, stronger ending. We’re left without any real indication of whether or not the world continues to work after the rebellion. As often is with these sorts of plot lines, it’s the next five chapters after the ending that I’m really interested in reading. Overall, I thought it was a fun, interesting, and definitely different, read that I would recommend to those of you that like more serious characters and situations.