Reviews

Qualify by Vera Nazarian

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So really this book was a 5* read but I'm giving it a 4 for originality. It's kind of a endgame (alien race controlling a competition and offering a few places to teens from across the world while the rest of the world gets destroyed) crossed with divergent (teens all split in to 4 categories based on their individual skill sets) crossed with hunger games (teens then all compete head to head in strange 'stadiums' with some brutal killing and deaths involved). Still a very good YA dystopian read though!

jj_tx's review

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adventurous emotional funny hopeful medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

The Atlantis Grail series is one of my favorites! Nazarian’s storytelling is funny, emotional, nerdy-science; great read.

catmom21's review

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3.0

3.5 stars.

First, the writing seems very juvenile. Not that it's written for a younger audience, which it is and I can recognize - the writing just reads like the author wrote this in high school and it hasn't been polished. It annoyed me at first but once I got into the story it was easier to overlook.

This book is similar to the other post-apocalyptic series that have been so popular - Hunger games, Divergent, etc. This one is interesting because it involves space and aliens. Or rather, ancient humans that are now aliens from Atlantis. The bare bones for a great series are there - it's different and interesting and there's potential for great world building with the Atlanteans. Unfortunately the author spends a lot of time in this LONG book focusing on Gwen's teenage feelings. (Also, the word "teen" was very overused. Nobody who is a teen actually calls themselves a teen. But I digress). I though there were elements that should have been explored more in depth - like their culture and tech classes - and other things were a drag - like how much Gwen was SO AMAZED that Logan would even look at her. I get it, it's a young adult book, but at the same time there was a lot of potential that got wasted to focus on that aspect.

Additionally it's got a weird tone. It is about qualifying or dying, and people do actually die. But unlike in the Hunger Games, I just didn't feel the seriousness of their situation. It was a lot of telling rather than showing. Plus, the time spent on love interests made it seem more lighthearted than perhaps was intended.

Overall I got very engrossed in the story (which, honestly, isn't hard for me to do) and I will absolutely read the second one. It's not on my list of greatest-of-all-time series, but it's an interesting world at least, even if the plot has major holes, and I'm looking forward to the next one.

silencia167's review

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3.0

Read this review and more on my blog, The Reality of Books: https://therealityofbooks.wordpress.com/

“You have two options. You die, or you Qualify.”

Qualify, by Vera Nazarian, tells the story of sixteen year old Gwenevere Lark. Gwen is a self proclaimed geek and klutz, living in the year 2047. Scientists discover an asteroid heading towards Earth that will destroy the planet, but descendants from Atlantis come down from space to offer their help—they will take a small percentage of people back to Atlantis with them, but those people must be in the their teens, they must smart, and they must be athletic. Gwen is definitely NOT athletic, but she knows that she has to try and Qualify. If she doesn’t, she’ll die. And if Gwen does qualify, she will have the option of participating in the Atlantis Grail and possibly becoming a full citizen of Atlantis—which would allow her to save her entire family.

I like Gwen. She's smart and a bit sassy, and she’s stronger than she gives herself credit for. I love how much she cares for her family, and how this trait stays with her throughout the entire book. I like how she relies on her brains and her inner strength rather than looks, making her a champion for geeks everywhere. Her family is also very relatable—the whiny little sister, the strong older brother, and the middle child brother. Gwen is sort of a mother hen to her siblings, a trait that both suits her character and informs her actions for much of the book.

I didn’t care for the romance, but that’s normal for me. I did appreciate that the romance took a backseat for most of the book. Gwen to me wasn’t a character that really seemed to fit the boy crazy mold, but she fell hard for Logan. And maybe that’s the way teen romance works—when you fall, you fall hard.

The world building in this is incredibly well done. The Atlantian culture is built around the ability to singing—singing controls all of the objects and technology of Atlantis, so perfect pitch is a helpful talent. The musical theory aspects were spot on, and I found it interesting how different quadrants of Atlantis worked in different musical areas—major, minor, flat, and sharp.

One of my biggest gripes with this book is that it could have strongly benefited from an editor. I received this as a DRC, but I recommended it to another friend to read (because she too loves dystopians) and she downloaded it from Amazon. We compared editions and noticed many of the same typographical and grammatical errors. The dialogue in many places is also stiff, using contractions where contractions would not normally be used in speech. This was a long book, and I’m not sure that it needed to be so long. Many things could have been much more concise. It only really starts to roll forward when we stop living in every second of Gwen’s life—and we don’t NEED every second. Stay with this book, and you won’t be sorry; the plot is a great concept and once the book makes it to the semis and the final it really rolls. But I fear many people won’t get that far.

3 stars.

**I received Qualify as a DRC from Netgalley. I was not paid to write this review. Qualify was published December 20, 2014, by Norilana Books.

kaitbabs's review against another edition

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adventurous hopeful medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.25

paradoxically's review

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2.0

Where to start, where to start. Okay, positives! The premise is interesting, in that yeah, there is impending doom, and yeah, there's some sadistic contest that only teenagers participate in, but at least the people doing the contest are actually trying to help...? Sort of. They aren't actually the bad guys, even if everything seems unfair. I also really liked how tight knit the Gwen's family was--that always makes me feel kind of warm and fuzzy inside.

Negatives are plenty, unfortunately. First of all, suspension of disbelief is stretched to the point of breaking. You really can't think too much about what's going on because in the end it just doesn't make any sense. They take the best and brightest and basically... train the crap out of them? They're supposed to be smart, supposedly, but the emphasis on physical prowess more than outweighs the emphasis on intelligence, and that's a crying shame. Then there's the technology all being based on sound, complete with people training special 'voices' that can do things up to and including compelling other people. Which... if people on Earth are able to duplicate (well, some), then why is it that it hasn't been discovered prior to the Atlanteans showing up? Sound based technology is just super sketchy sounding and it just doesn't make sense. Don't think too hard because you're going to come up with a lot of things wrong with the book, including the televised super death semi-finals created by the Atlanteans even though they're trying to help... Some of the obstacles faced by Gwen and them were ridiculous and seemed more luck based--like definitely don't be the first person to try anything because you're probably going to die.

I also realllyyyy hated how caught up Gwen is on how beautiful everyone around her is. Not to mention her gigantic crush on Logan which made me want to throw things at a wall. Seriously, for someone who is in a life or death situation she sure devotes a lot of time thinking about how perfect someone's abs are. Tone it down. Focus on your task. Is that too much to ask for because apparently it is. It grated so bad every time she stared at someone or thought about how gorgeous they were.

The pacing was weird. So much time was spent on training and then you get to the semi-finals and finals. The least amount of time was spent on the finals (why) and the task for the final is basically

Spoiler

an endurance race. Really.

At least Gwen spent some brain cells during the semi-finals, but other than one instance during the finals it was kind of very straightforward and kind of dull.

I did like how diverse people were in the book, from different races to having a wheelchair bound character. That said, a lot of the dialogue was just kind of awkward? Do people sound like that and I am living in a bubble... maybe. Sometimes I just cringed. I also didn't like some characters like Logan who seemed pretty fake, haha. Gwen is bearable because I have a main character thing and I love main characters, but some of her actions are super suspect. And then there's her little sister, Gracie. Who I wanted to throttle a lot of the time. Bratty little sister ahoy.

I thought there were a lot of problems with the book. It's not very good? BUT I did finish it! And didn't completely hate it as long as I didn't think too hard about what I read. It was entertaining, I suppose, even if the writing was pretty bad. 2 stars.