Rook Narrator: Caroline Feraday Published by Scholastic Inc. on April 28 2015
Source: Library Auidobook
Genres: Dystopian
Format: Audiobook
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Review
I loved the idea of a future society regressing and reliving its past. This whole book was a lesson in “history is always repeating itself.” I loved the class divides between Paris between the Upper City, the part of Paris that remained unharmed during the polar shift, where the higher classes lived. Sunken City, the portion of Paris that had sunk into the ground, filled with the lower classes and brimming with the terror brought on by the Razor’s hunt for its next victim. It was also fun to see nods to items from the present day; things like CDs and video game controllers were looked upon as artifacts in this future world and were hoarded away and sold on the black market to the highest bidder.
The only problem with the world-building in Rook is that there wasn’t enough of it. There were so many exciting aspects to this world that weren’t explained. I wish we could have learned more about what had happened during the polar shift and how society ended up the way it did. A new religion centered around the Goddess of Fate played a role in this novel. Still, we didn’t learn anything about why this religion developed or what its tenets meant for its followers. I was left a little confused about some of the events leading up to the novel’s start.
I had some pretty mixed feelings about Rook as I was reading it. I loved so many elements of this book, but I felt like something was missing. The story felt pretty flat; it moved along consistently, without any natural highs or lows in action. This book seemed to take me forever to read, and I felt like I would read for hours, and nothing had happened to move the plot along.
