Pure (Pure Trilogy, #1)

by Julianna Baggott

[clementine]

I read a lot of YA dystopian, and if you follow my activity on here with any degree of interest, you're probably going, "Um, duh." Out of the 41 books I've read so far this year, 14 of them have been dystopian. I just have a deep love for the genre. And while I do enjoy YA dystopian, obviously, the genre in general seems to be a bit stagnant as of late. I keep seeing the same barely fleshed out character archetypes, the same types of events.

And that's why I appreciated Pure so much: it was something new in pretty much every way. Part of it reminded me a bit of Michael Grant's Gone series - the dome, the multiple POVs, the mutations, the fact that it really pushed the boundaries of what makes most people comfortable. However, it was better-plotted, better-developed, and better-written than that series, and didn't have to rely just on the shock factor. (Plus, the plot was totally different.)

First of all, the premise of Pure is awesome. It's something recognizably dystopian - a nearly unrecognizable world destroyed by human actions, a corrupt and downright evil government - that Baggott has played around with to create a refreshingly different world. And the world-building! I could imagine everything very vividly, and it was quite atmospheric. The Dome itself was a little less well-described, but I think there will be room for that in the next book.

At first I thought I'd be bothered by the multiple shifting POVs, since I generally find that to be a somewhat lazy literary device, and it's not used very well in a lot of books. But it worked really well here, partly because the number of characters was limited, and partly because everything came together very well and every character really was important. Although it's obvious that Pressia and Partridge are the main characters, Lyda's and El Capitan's POVs helped make the world even more vivid, and they were of course important to the plot.

I liked the individual characters a lot, too. I think there's probably room for more development, but they felt pretty realistic to me. Sometimes I have a hard time giving a shit about characters in YA novels because for some reason there doesn't seem to be a lot of focus on character development, but I truly did care about the outcome of Pure. Pressia's an especially good character. I like her a lot.

I loved how deliciously dark and gruesome Pure was. There were points where I felt a bit queasy, and where my heart literally sped up. A lot of it was pretty gross - even just the introduction to Pressia's doll fist was a bit shocking to me. I tend to enjoy pretty graphic and twisted books, so even though sometimes it was a bit hard to take, I loved all those details. I also liked that Baggott wasn't afraid to kill off characters. When Lyda opens the box and sees the fan I literally gasped, because that was a pretty difficult and significant death. I was saddened by it, but it was realistic.

My one major gripe would be the romance aspect. I don't know why every single YA dystopian novel has to have some kind of romance sub-plot. I thought this one was handled better, since Bradwell isn't the archetypal hot-but-kind-of-dickish-guy-with-no-discernible-personality, and it didn't take over the entire book (and made some sense, really), but it would be awesome to not have to focus on romance in these books. I read dystopian for the worldbuilding and speculative aspects, not the romance.

I'm really looking forward to the second book. I think Pure works as a standalone book, and I'm a bit wary of the idea of a series (as they generally go downhill), but I enjoyed Pure so much that I really am excited to be immersed in the world again.