Rebel (Reboot, #2)

by Amy Tintera

[Ace]

Originally posted at: http://www.novelthoughts.org/review-reboot-rebel-by-amy-tintera/

I first discovered these books while working at a school – a job I only just left – a few years ago. How I found them? I saw the covers and thought they looked cool and always went ‘must read’ of course I never did while I worked there. Starting this new job requires me to spend hours (2.5) on a train each day so I ended up at the library and saw them both on the shelf so I grabbed them. I don’t regret it one bit.

The Reboot Universe is detailed, captivating and alluring in many ways. At first, I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect especially with the whole ‘coming back to life’ part. Dystopia and Zombies while not new they aren’t exactly common. (List of Dystopian!Zombie books) Or at least I haven’t come across many of them. I was also afraid that this wouldn’t be well written despite the hype about it that I found on the internet. Dystopia is one of those genres I find that many people write because it’s big and sells well such as Vampires, Werewolves etc. I was therefore quite pleasantly surprised on just how quickly I got hooked on this.

Amy Tintera has done an amazing job at developing the world of this duology. From the very first page I was captivated. The level of detail and background is great. The whole dystopia and rebooting is done in a way which is believable and to me that is the most important aspect of the books. Yes it’s Dystopian and essentially has Zombies in it but it’s believable and I could truly see it happening if such a disease did exist.

The character’s and the development they went through were great too. Wren is someone who was dead for nearly three hours before coming back to life. She’s changed a lot. The book starts out with her being an emotionless killer machine but through her interactions with Callum over the course of the first book and then into the second book we see her grow and develop in a way that doesn’t leave us scratching our heads and going ‘why do that’ just for the sake of doing it. The fact that she didn’t immediately fall in love with him was great too. I was worried it was going to be incredibly cliche in that regard but was pleasantly surprised. I would have liked it to have zero romance but as a YA novel well… Romance is to be expected. Despite that it wasn’t the focus of the book which I appreciated. Sometimes you just don’t want to read a romance line when people are fighting for their lives.

Not doing it as a trilogy I think helped a lot. The books were fast paced but not too fast. If it was drawn out over three books I think it could have gotten boring so I applaud Amy for not conforming to genre ‘standards’ of doing things in threes. It was a well-made choice.