Pure

Pure

 

Julianna Baggott

 

 

 

I'm a little conflicted about this one. Part of me really likes it, and part of me despises it.

 

The world is definitely different than most of what I've read, so that's a plus. There was a bomb that was detonated that resulted in radiation and 'fusing' where people's body parts are fused with objects that were near them when the bomb went off. There was also a dome that was built, and everyone inside is considered 'pure', whereas the fused people outside the dome are seen as 'wretches'. There's also some scary monsters called dusts and some groupies that just like to steal things and it gets a bit confusing.

 

 

So, we have our main character, Pressia, who has a hand fused with a doll and burns on her face. Not in bad condition, compared to some other people. She's turning 16 soon which means she'll be taken by the OSR which is basically like an army. She stumbles upon a meeting of what she later finds is the resistance, led by Bradwell (another wretch fused with birds in his back). Then, on the inside of the dome, there's Partridge who is a pure but seems to be different from the others surrounding him. There are also other important characters but I would have to give some of the plot away to describe how they're relevant.

 

One of the things I loved about the book is that the world is different, but I did get pretty confused by all of the different creatures and it seemed to get pretty convoluted. There were supposed to be quite a few twists, but I felt like I saw almost all of them coming and they were just painfully drawn out. For instance, when Partridge was little his mother told him a fairytale about a swan queen who had two sons (Partridge had a brother) and he can't seem to grasp that the story is real even though it's pretty obvious.

 

There was one turn I enjoyed that most people probably didn't, and that's just because my mind is pretty twisted. Unlike other people, I like when authors kill characters when you aren't expecting it (case in point: Divergent). Some qualms that I had were that Pressia couldn't kill someone when ordered to by the army, but later in the book she shot someone close to her in the head without blinking. Also, there's a girl named Lyda that has been in the dome for quite some time, and we see that women are supposed to be 'feminine' and do things like knit, but she's so prepared to kill people later in the book and that just made no sense to me.

 

Overall, it was okay.