bloody fucking hell.
I don't know how I even got through that book, to be honest. If I could call it anything, it was certainly an ordeal. By the end of The Elite, I'm pretty sure we all know damn well exactly what was going to happen. (If it wasn't already obvious at the beginning of the Elite, but I digress...) This book ended up being one, big, tense waiting game. At least on the romantic front. Waiting for America to tell both of those poor boys about the deep shit she got the both of them into, waiting for it to all finally end, waiting for all the politics to figure themselves out, and waiting, most importantly, to see if America does anything dubmirable. (Dumb, but somehow admirable.)
Also, judging by the cover, I was expecting something at least in the vicinity of fluff. Maybe that was a stupid conclusion, I mean, the Elite was pretty intense, but, c'mon, the cover model's wearing a f*cking wedding dress.
Thus concludes an assortment of things to look past.
Unlike The Elite, there aren't many gush-worthy elements to this novel. It's much more serious, and it examines the reality of America and her country and, most importantly, the nature of her love, but in a much more compelling and, well, deeper, way than its predecessors. In fact, I applaud Cass for resisting the temptation to crowd please our inner fangirls. I'd assume it was increasingly difficult, because the more I read about the SRS BUSINESS going on within the monarchy, the more I wanted to read about how pretty the interview dresses were.
{mild spoilers below} !
But, I soldiered on through the mentions of misuse of power and twisted history and the absolute horror that is America's ridiculous hesitance. (You've acted on impulse before, dude. I don't understand how it's somehow so hard when it comes to love interests. GOD.) And, thus, I found myself not in a pile of fluffity fluffy fluffing fluff but in a pile of mass death and destruction.
But, hey, I asked for action, and I did get it. (?) I'm not sure if what actually happened counts as actual, real action. There was just a lot of blood and tenseness. Still, Cass managed to make America into something of a badass, but I daresay she already was, after all she did against the government before that point.
{mild spoilers over} !
Cass also did a fantastic job of making me actually care about America and Maxon's relationship. The feelings did manage to mildly strike my heartstrings before, but this time...damn. That really fucked me up. And I'm mildly romance-repulsed, mind you.
Now, enough about the intenseness. I want to talk about how beautifully the outline of the plot was executed. I've never read a story that delivered such a difference in between scenes, where each chapter is an event. This story was certainly an emotional ordeal, but it was not a boring one. There's just so much shit that went down. I can't even process it.
I've already read this once before, right when it came out, back in May of 2014. And, reading it again, the initial excitement isn't left behind. This book is surely one that doesn't disappoint.
From the action, to the romance, to the dystopia, this book is truly epic. I'd ask for more but I already know exactly how that'd turn out.
(show spoiler)
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