The United States of American has fallen. It' s now The United Northern Alliance: an alliance between America, Canada, and Mexico. The government has decided that at the age of sixteen you must take a personality profile test to determine if you are a threat to society. If you fail, you will be sent to The Wheel, the harshest prison set up by the government. You have been be forsaken.
Orphan Alenna Shawcross goes in to take her personality profile test expecting to pass. The next thing she knows, she's waking up on The Wheel frantically trying to figure out what' s going on. She meets a girl named Gadya, who takes Alenna to her tribe, where she meets Liam, a boy trying to find a way to escape the Wheel. Soon, Alenna finds out that this all may have started with her parents, and she is determined to find out what secrets the Wheel is hiding about them. As Alenna and her fellow tribe members try to plan an escape, she begins to learn that not all of the teens are forsaken and that there' s something sinister running below the surface.
I was a little disappointed with The Forsaken. I had this book on my to-read-list for at least three months before it came out, so I was anticipating great things. The main thing that disappointed me was the detachment I felt from most of the characters. I didn't feel that connection with any of the characters in the beginning. It did change toward the end. Another disappointment was how slow the book starts. If fact, I did not feel hooked until page 170. That's when you learn more critical things, and it started to live up to my expectations. Then I got to page 251, and I COULD NOT STOP READING. I was sucked in to the story, and at page 298 I was sold. By then, I started to connect with the characters. Lisa Stasse really put the emotion into the ending, and I hope that and the development of the characters will continue in the second book.
I loved the setting of this book. To me, it felt like Lost's jungle with a Hunger Games fight-for-survival feeling. I also felt that Lisa Stasse did a superb job of giving just enough detail to make it seem like you were there. Overall, I liked it, and I loved the ending. I, for one, will be looking for Lisa Stasse 's next book, The Uprising, which is due to come out summer 2013.
Warnings:
Throughout the whole book there 's a lot of violence, so I would definitely recommend it only for older teens.. It' s quite graphic and bloody at times.
There are no sex scenes, although there are some comments about it (they 're not graphic) and a few mild kissing scenes, but overall I was very happy with how little there was in that area.
There was also some language in this book, but not as much as I would expect from a teen novel.
Reviewer Age:15
Reviewer City, State and Country: Sharpsville, Indiana USA
Orphan Alenna Shawcross goes in to take her personality profile test expecting to pass. The next thing she knows, she's waking up on The Wheel frantically trying to figure out what' s going on. She meets a girl named Gadya, who takes Alenna to her tribe, where she meets Liam, a boy trying to find a way to escape the Wheel. Soon, Alenna finds out that this all may have started with her parents, and she is determined to find out what secrets the Wheel is hiding about them. As Alenna and her fellow tribe members try to plan an escape, she begins to learn that not all of the teens are forsaken and that there' s something sinister running below the surface.
I was a little disappointed with The Forsaken. I had this book on my to-read-list for at least three months before it came out, so I was anticipating great things. The main thing that disappointed me was the detachment I felt from most of the characters. I didn't feel that connection with any of the characters in the beginning. It did change toward the end. Another disappointment was how slow the book starts. If fact, I did not feel hooked until page 170. That's when you learn more critical things, and it started to live up to my expectations. Then I got to page 251, and I COULD NOT STOP READING. I was sucked in to the story, and at page 298 I was sold. By then, I started to connect with the characters. Lisa Stasse really put the emotion into the ending, and I hope that and the development of the characters will continue in the second book.
I loved the setting of this book. To me, it felt like Lost's jungle with a Hunger Games fight-for-survival feeling. I also felt that Lisa Stasse did a superb job of giving just enough detail to make it seem like you were there. Overall, I liked it, and I loved the ending. I, for one, will be looking for Lisa Stasse 's next book, The Uprising, which is due to come out summer 2013.
Warnings:
Throughout the whole book there 's a lot of violence, so I would definitely recommend it only for older teens.. It' s quite graphic and bloody at times.
There are no sex scenes, although there are some comments about it (they 're not graphic) and a few mild kissing scenes, but overall I was very happy with how little there was in that area.
There was also some language in this book, but not as much as I would expect from a teen novel.
Reviewer Age:15
Reviewer City, State and Country: Sharpsville, Indiana USA
