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A review by jessdone
Rebel Born by Amy A. Bartol
3.0
I think the series wrote itself into a corner in the second book. The tech kept evolving, at that growth rate, there's a point where it's hard to keep the story grounded or to imagine a logical ending.
Even in the end, the series strove to consider everyone's view point, but the time jumps or writer's fatigue or something else muddied those perspectives. I didn't really connect with any of the characters where in past books I'd connected with all of them, even "evil" ones.
In the first two books, Roselle was empathetic, clever and an excellent problem solver. This book still strives to frame her as a clever problem solver, but readers are left out of the process. It's unsatisfying and feels like a deus ex machina. Arguably, the whole book is a wordy deus ex machina, which I think is what's so disappointing.
I love the concept of a "real" world and a "virtual" world, but how we got to that concept and what was done with it was lacking. There were so many mash ups we could have seen, The Matrix, Inception, Ready Player One, etc. Instead of building on these possibilities or distinguishing her story from these, Bartol creates hallow echoes of these ideas. They lack life or direction of their own, and that made me sad as a person invested in the series.
Even in the end, the series strove to consider everyone's view point, but the time jumps or writer's fatigue or something else muddied those perspectives. I didn't really connect with any of the characters where in past books I'd connected with all of them, even "evil" ones.
In the first two books, Roselle was empathetic, clever and an excellent problem solver. This book still strives to frame her as a clever problem solver, but readers are left out of the process. It's unsatisfying and feels like a deus ex machina. Arguably, the whole book is a wordy deus ex machina, which I think is what's so disappointing.
I love the concept of a "real" world and a "virtual" world, but how we got to that concept and what was done with it was lacking. There were so many mash ups we could have seen, The Matrix, Inception, Ready Player One, etc. Instead of building on these possibilities or distinguishing her story from these, Bartol creates hallow echoes of these ideas. They lack life or direction of their own, and that made me sad as a person invested in the series.