A review by turrean
Atlantia by Ally Condie
3.0
A dystopian undersea world. Some nice overtones of mermaid-ness (sirens, a "witch" who can "take" your voice, people who need the sea to survive). I'm also a sucker for twin stories.
I found it a bit slow going. Because the rules of the society were couched in religious terms, it made the story a bit dreamier and more remote, because you'd start looking for a rational explanation for events, or failing that, a consistently magical one, and then you'd say, Oh, right, religion.
So even though there is not every supposed to be
We are told that the religious beliefs of the communities were basically designed around what it was necessary for the Above / Below people to believe, rather than an organic outgrowth of existing belief. Sort of an Esperanto religion. People DO believe in spite of everything, but as a reader it was hard to untangle whether characters still sought to explain things in terms of miracles because of habit or because they still believed. I really liked the protagonist's explanation of why certain events fell out as they did -- she could explain things "rationally". Yet she still thought of her aunt's last gift as a miracle.
I found it a bit slow going. Because the rules of the society were couched in religious terms, it made the story a bit dreamier and more remote, because you'd start looking for a rational explanation for events, or failing that, a consistently magical one, and then you'd say, Oh, right, religion.
So even though there is not every supposed to be
Spoiler
more than one siren in a family...well, maybe it's a miracle. Why bats that have spent generations in the undersea city (what are they eating??) can shift easily to seashore life. Miracle. Why Rio, Maire, and the evil villain's siren abilities are so different from those of other sirens. Miracle?We are told that the religious beliefs of the communities were basically designed around what it was necessary for the Above / Below people to believe, rather than an organic outgrowth of existing belief. Sort of an Esperanto religion. People DO believe in spite of everything, but as a reader it was hard to untangle whether characters still sought to explain things in terms of miracles because of habit or because they still believed. I really liked the protagonist's explanation of why certain events fell out as they did -- she could explain things "rationally". Yet she still thought of her aunt's last gift as a miracle.