A review by novelheartbeat
Revolution 19 by Gregg Rosenblum

Did not finish book.

DNF

It causes me physical pain to DNF this book. The cover!! I love it so much! Her eye looks so awesome, and I love the way the font looks. Not to mention that the synopsis sounds amazeballs! This book was one of my most anticipated 2013 releases. That is, until I started seeing the nasty ratings. I heard from many people that the writing quality was middle grade at best. In a way, I'm glad my hopes were squashed down before I picked this up, because I went in with rather low expectations.
I'm afraid I couldn't get past page 90. I wanted so badly to be the black sheep this time, but I'm afraid I share the same opinion as everyone else.

My main issue was the horribly sophomoric writing. This should really have been labeled as MG, not YA. My second issue was all the terms. Freeposts, Kidbons (which I eventually figured out was a bonfire for kids...so original), chaff beacons, and the term 'fletch' (which was used to describe a girl. Hot? Cool? Who knows). Then there was mention of a revolution 19 renegade. What is it? Why the number? What exactly does it entail? It's the title of the book, so I'd think it would warrant an explanation straight off. I hate it when an author uses terms and doesn't explain what they are. It drives me CRAZY. If you give me the gist of it, fine. Or even if I can glean the meaning from context. But when you use it in a sentence and I STILL have no clue what it is...yeah, that's a problem for me.
Re-educated? Is that some sort of brainwashing? Even the main characters didn't know what it was. Wouldn't they think to ask? That would have been the common sense thing to do, when a stranger mentions a term that you've never heard before.

The main reason I wanted to read this book was because of the robots. I thought maybe I could read something else that would be as cool as Partials. But the robots in this book were cheesy. First of all, they were supposed to be super bad guys, but they didn't kill just anyone. No, they had to 'maintain the approved release control group quota' - whatever the hell that means - so they only killed a couple people out of a group. What is the point of that? They were box-like with wheels...I think (I say think because from the shoddy description I don't actually know) they were still supposed to be vaguely human-like, though. It's just that when I think of rolling robots, I think of the dorky police robots in Treasure Planet. Real scary...
Plus every time a robot talked, it was in caps. For some reason, this bothered me. I can't exactly explain why, it just didn't work in the dialogue.

The conversations didn't flow and were too cumbersome to be realistic. When the characters would talk, I kinda zoned out. The characters were all cardboard cutouts, without their own personalities. Plus I found them annoying. Especially Lexi, who kept calling Nick 'rock star.' Seriously, like every page. And there wasn't even a reason for the nickname (that I could see, anyway). Every time she said it, my eye twitched.

Overall, I was bored. Things were happening, but they weren't exciting like they should have been. I just felt 'meh' about the story, the plot, and the characters. Great idea. Not-so-great delivery.