Glitch by Heather Anastasiu
Published: 7th August 2012
By: St. Martin's Press
ISBN13: 9781250009111
Source: Netgalley
Target Audience: YA
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars
Glitch is based in a world where nuclear war has already happened. People are chipped so they can't feel any emotion, in the hope of preventing future wars. They live below the earth's surface as the air is now toxic from nuclear fallout. They are like worker drones, just going about their day with no emotion, not caring about anything or anyone. They live by the motto Community first, Community always.
This book was a very slow starter and I felt like giving up. But, something about it just kept pulling me back. I'm glad it did, because it certainly got better as it went along, with quite a climactic ending. Setting up what I feel could be a really good sequel. I think slowed this for me was that there is kind of a repetitive scene, due to the fact that Zoe has memory disrupter inserted so has to learn everything again, before we can really move on with the story.
Then there's the love triangle. When she meets Adrien first, everything moves far too quickly, but as she forgets all this, the build up is better the second time around. This is when we also meet Max. Personally, I took an almost instant dislike to him. But I liked Adrien a lot, except for the way he spoke. He used ridiculous language in place of swear words. He says "shunting", "cracking" and "godlam'd". This annoyed me more than anything (maybe more than it should have), because it made Adrien sound like an idiot. Either write the book to include real swear words or leave them out altogether, don't make up ridiculous ones. Just my opinion.
The world building was really good and I could build vivid images from Heather's descriptions. It's an imaginative idea and was well executed. Most of this book is based below the surface. I'm interested to see more of how people are living on the surface and I think we'll see more of this in the sequel.
Overall, this was an enjoyable read, which if the sequel continues in this direction, I feel could be a lot better than Glitch.
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