Isana S. (kkslover9) reviewed on 7/17/2013 + 26 more book reviews

So much potential, but so poorly executed.

First of all, the writing was all right. It started off a little shaky but improved a lot over the book and I got into it enough that I wanted to continue reading.

This book is really something and in a bad way. Shinn tries to do a whole lot and it ends up being WAY too much. I had very high hopes for this book. The racial and sexual politics intrigued me at first. The set up of EXTREMELY flawed characters was nice in the beginning. There was room for a lot of growth. However, that growth never really happens as much as it should. I mean, we have a bit of it. But the "change" wasn't actually that far from the original points of views of the characters anyway.

Shinn really should have also stuck to just race. She brought in homosexuality (and made a really mind-boggling distinction between female and male homosexuality that was unbelievable in such a society) and abortion, but she never dealt with them. I mean, we have two conversations where it's like, "yeah. We believe this and you believe that and we both back no sense," in terms of homosexuality, but it's never resolved. On one hand, we're cool with female homosexuality, but even though Nolan spends quite a bit of time talking about his feelings about male homosexuality, it's never resolved. I mean, why put it in, if you're not going to actually tackle it? It makes it seem as if you're supporting that kind of idea. And then abortion is brought up for literally no reason. I got the idea that Shinn is anti-abortion because that side kinda wins the argument (even after comparing abortion to murdering children um . . . ).

Race is dealt with acceptable for the most part, though I must point out that we never actually meet a "good" guldman even though we have several "good" blueman characters. It could have been done a whole lot more effectively but it wasn't atrocious. And sex is done about the same.

I think Shinn tried to hard to reverse all the conventions of our world and ended up messing up big time.

The romance is kind of weird but turns out relatively cute, which was nice.

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