Monday, March 3, 2014

Burn

Author: Julianna Baggott
Rating: 4 stars
Review Contains Spoilers

Burn is the last book of Julianna Baggott's amazing Pure trilogy. Each book, especially the ending, always left me fangirling or with my mouth hanging wide open.
If I had read Burn as a hardcover the ending would have made me throw the book against the wall. Luckily I read it on a Kindle, which I threw into a pile of pillows.

Baggott's series takes place in a post-apocalyptic steampunk world. The world is ravaged by disease and death after nuclear detonations wipe a majority of sustainable life out. One group of people, The Pures, survived the detonations by taking refuge in a sky dome that protected their bodies. The people who survive the blasts on land are the Wretches, people battling disfigurations and mutations. This series doesn't shy away from adult material. By adult material I am excluding sexual content and swear words. Violence is an ongoing theme but mainly it's just imagery. People are fused to inanimate objects, animals and other people. The class divide is a dome.
The trilogy follows about five different characters. Two are in the forefront:
 Partridge is a Pure. His father, the trilogy villain, is a high ranking official in the Dome. His master plans and ideas are what drives the plot and characters throughout all three books. Partridge leaves the sanctity of the Dome to find his mother, who he believed dead for most of his life.
Pressia is a Wretch and she's on the run. Once everyone is a certain age they are required to join the militia as a soldier or suffer the consequences. While on the run, Pressia and Partridge meet and become allies. Along their journey to take down the Dome and discover the secrets surrounding their families and the detonations they discover there's more to the world of ash and fire. They also meet other Pures and Wretches that will change their lives for better or worse.
Burn falls flat to me because the series ended with more questions than answers. I feel like certain characters were killed off just to induce fan rage. Other characters were slaughtered by weak portrayals. Readers got the strong sense that an outside world existed and survived the detonations but we only got a mere glimpse of that life. Pressia's father remained a mystery. The best twist regarded how Wretches were seen as superior due to their immunity to the outside world--Pures had weak immune systems and could not live outside the Dome. A cure was also in the works. Both plots had amazing and terrifying potential but the ending was so rushed readers were denied to the chance to savor it. Maybe this is all a bad joke and there'll be more books. Here's to hoping, anyway.  

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