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lizzyzzil's review against another edition
2.0
great plot and super interesting universe, but i felt it tried too hard to be creepy or horrific and it would have been creepier and more horrifying if the attempt wasn't so blatant... if that makes sense. I enjoyed it and read quickly, and it picked up a lot at the end so I was thinking about trying the rest of the series, but ultimately I won't read any more in this series.
lyntwhit's review against another edition
Great book! Zipped through it in a couple of days. Would recommend. Of course with The Hunger Games being so of the moment, I did at times compare and contrast Pure to other dystopian fiction like The Hunger Games, The Maze Runner, Aftertime, etc. I found the whole aspect of the people being joined to inanimate and living objects interesting and scary. That was something I hadn't come across before. The dynamic with Partridge and his father reminded me of The Uglies series. Also the "caste" system of the "pures" vs. "wretches" reminded me of The Uglies series as well.
vanikr's review against another edition
4.0
Ich finde Memento ist ein wirklih richtig tolles Buch. Die Geschichte ist unglaublich spannend. Es finde es schon eklig, das Menschen mit anderen Menschen oder Gegenständen verbunden sind, aber irgendwie macht es das auch spannend.
Und besonders gut finde ich das alles zusammenhängt, man denkt anfangs alles ist zufällig verlaufen, aber am Ende erfährt man dann alles war genauso von Patridges Vater geplannt.
Auch diese zwei parallelen Liebesgeschichten sind einfach klasse, ich würde unglaublich gerne den zweiten Teil lesen.
Und besonders gut finde ich das alles zusammenhängt, man denkt anfangs alles ist zufällig verlaufen, aber am Ende erfährt man dann alles war genauso von Patridges Vater geplannt.
Auch diese zwei parallelen Liebesgeschichten sind einfach klasse, ich würde unglaublich gerne den zweiten Teil lesen.
yodamom's review against another edition
4.0
After the apocalypse the world is divided, the Pure's that live in the Dome untainted by the detonations. Then there are the Wretches. Their bodies fused to objects that were near them during the blast, some unrecognizable as even once being human. The animals, the dust and the plants, everything has been effected.
Prissia a wretch had her hand fused to her doll she was holding. Where her hand used to be has doll eyes that click shut, persed lips. She can feel the small ridges of her knuckles and fingers where they fused. She is raised by her Grandfather who has a horrendous fan forever lodged in his throat. She is about to turn 16 an age where you get taken away.
Partridge, is a Pure the son of one of the leaders of the Dome.Eh has been isolated and lonely. The boys in the dDome undergo a coding treatment to make them better. For some reason his coding is not going as it should. His mother gave him something before the blast that made some of the coding not work. After his brother kills himself and his father is angry about the coding not working he makes a drastic decision. He leaves the Dome, escapes.
His adventure into the world is a terrible nightmare, and yet there is beauty. The effects of the blast and the nanotechnology in the bombs has helped regenerate humans into grotesque beings. His survival is unlikely until he meets Prissia and her friends and discover a history that will change everything they believed.
Fascinating details and world development. I can not compare this to any book I've read. It was so completely unique in the details they almost overwhelmed the story. It is a dark world and a dark story, not happy fairy tales here, and yet I could not put it down. I will always remember parts of this story.
Prissia a wretch had her hand fused to her doll she was holding. Where her hand used to be has doll eyes that click shut, persed lips. She can feel the small ridges of her knuckles and fingers where they fused. She is raised by her Grandfather who has a horrendous fan forever lodged in his throat. She is about to turn 16 an age where you get taken away.
Partridge, is a Pure the son of one of the leaders of the Dome.Eh has been isolated and lonely. The boys in the dDome undergo a coding treatment to make them better. For some reason his coding is not going as it should. His mother gave him something before the blast that made some of the coding not work. After his brother kills himself and his father is angry about the coding not working he makes a drastic decision. He leaves the Dome, escapes.
His adventure into the world is a terrible nightmare, and yet there is beauty. The effects of the blast and the nanotechnology in the bombs has helped regenerate humans into grotesque beings. His survival is unlikely until he meets Prissia and her friends and discover a history that will change everything they believed.
Fascinating details and world development. I can not compare this to any book I've read. It was so completely unique in the details they almost overwhelmed the story. It is a dark world and a dark story, not happy fairy tales here, and yet I could not put it down. I will always remember parts of this story.
alyssaindira's review against another edition
3.0
Hey guys, so I just finished reading Pure by Julianna Baggott, and...*shudders*. Wait, I am getting ahead of myself. Okay. so at first, from the book jacket is kinda sounded like the novel Under the Never Sky, where the 2 leading characters are from extremely different worlds, one technological advances, the other stuck in cave man era. Then something happens and they collide and yeah. But it totally wasnt like that at all. Which was good and bad. However, I've only been truly rattled, to say the least, by one book. Pure has joined that league. I must give props to the author for depicting the novel so thoroughly that the very disturbing images(in my opinion) are painted vividly in one's mind. *Shudders*. I think I can say it was one of the most creepiest dystopian/ apocalyptic novels I've encountered. Mostly due to the fact of fused people. *Cringes* Even though in the first chapter I wasnt entirely sure what the author meant when she stated that Pressia and her doll had become one. But I soon found out. Then more examples started to pop up. That is when the book and my mind entered a whole new level of...i just simply cannot describe how I felt. I was just entirely grossed out. And mostly, I can handle a lot of imagery in novels. Guess Pure just really tested my threshold. I am typing a few examples so you guys can try to experience my mind set.
"Three women step out-all fused-a tangle of cloth hiding their engorged middle. Parts of each face seem to be shiny and stiff as if fused with plastic. Groupies, thats what theyre called. One of the women has sloped shoulders, a curved spine. There are so many arms, same pale, some freckled, some dark."
" SHe was sure she saw the small quick wings of birds-rumpled gray feathers, a quick glimpse of a pair of small orange claws tucked up under a downy belly-lodged there in his back"
"As the crowd moves closer, Partridge sees that the children are not just with their mothers. They're attached. The first woman they saw walks with an uneven gait. The child who'd seemed to be holding onto her leg is actually fused there. Legless, the boy has only one arm, and his torso and head protrude from her upper thigh. Another woman has eyes peering out from her bulbous baby head that sits like a goiter on her neck"
"Pressia follows our good mother's gaze and there she sees the gauzy material of the shirt draw in and pull in and puff out-all that is left of her child, just an infant, the purpled lips, the dark mouth, embedded in her upper arm, still alive, breathing."
And those are just a few! The people in this book have been fused with anything you can think of. Rocks, sand, metal, animals, weapons, etc. And it's all the governments fault. The story said that an atomic bomb obliterated most of the country, mostly because the government wanted to wipe out most of the population and start fresh. Start clean. Pure. Yeah, I wouldnt put it past them. Anyway, moving on to the story, another thing I disliked was that the battle scenes were just too chaotic, so hyped up and frenzied that I couldnt understand half of what was going on. All in all, I liked the general idea of the book, the beginning storyline, but then it just seemed to go off in some crazed tangent and I had a hard time keeping up. Probably wont read the second book Fuse, or the third Burn.
"Three women step out-all fused-a tangle of cloth hiding their engorged middle. Parts of each face seem to be shiny and stiff as if fused with plastic. Groupies, thats what theyre called. One of the women has sloped shoulders, a curved spine. There are so many arms, same pale, some freckled, some dark."
" SHe was sure she saw the small quick wings of birds-rumpled gray feathers, a quick glimpse of a pair of small orange claws tucked up under a downy belly-lodged there in his back"
"As the crowd moves closer, Partridge sees that the children are not just with their mothers. They're attached. The first woman they saw walks with an uneven gait. The child who'd seemed to be holding onto her leg is actually fused there. Legless, the boy has only one arm, and his torso and head protrude from her upper thigh. Another woman has eyes peering out from her bulbous baby head that sits like a goiter on her neck"
"Pressia follows our good mother's gaze and there she sees the gauzy material of the shirt draw in and pull in and puff out-all that is left of her child, just an infant, the purpled lips, the dark mouth, embedded in her upper arm, still alive, breathing."
And those are just a few! The people in this book have been fused with anything you can think of. Rocks, sand, metal, animals, weapons, etc. And it's all the governments fault. The story said that an atomic bomb obliterated most of the country, mostly because the government wanted to wipe out most of the population and start fresh. Start clean. Pure. Yeah, I wouldnt put it past them. Anyway, moving on to the story, another thing I disliked was that the battle scenes were just too chaotic, so hyped up and frenzied that I couldnt understand half of what was going on. All in all, I liked the general idea of the book, the beginning storyline, but then it just seemed to go off in some crazed tangent and I had a hard time keeping up. Probably wont read the second book Fuse, or the third Burn.
celjla212's review against another edition
4.0
The Earth has been laid to waste by a nuclear event. The only place that remains whole and pristine is the Dome, a controlled environment where the lucky got to stay.
Nine years after the Detonations, Pressia Belze lives out in the ruined land, where survivors of the Detonations are forever fused to whatever they happened to be near at the time of the explosions--glass, metal, even other people. Pressia has one hand fused with a doll's head. She lives with her grandfather, who is getting sicker by the day. The worst thing of all is that Pressia knows it's only a matter of time before she has to leave him all alone. It's two weeks before her sixteenth birthday--at which time she will be forced to join the OSR, a sort of guerilla regime intent on taking down the Dome.
In a completely opposite world, Partridge Willux lives inside the Dome, and feels like a constant disappointment to his father--the man who designed the Dome. Those who live inside the dome are called Pures. Partridge is a student at the Academy, when one day he takes a field trip and finds out that the mother he believed died in the Detonations may be alive on the outside. So he decides he must escape. When Pressia and Partridge's worlds collide, they bond together and come to discover truths that will turn both of their worlds upside down.
I really liked this book a lot. The world the author created is so despondent, you can feel it coming through the pages of the book. The characters are likable and you can identify with their struggles. I especially liked Partridge, because even though he had no idea what he was looking for or even where to begin his search, he never faltered in the fact that he needed to go out there and find it. Any other Pure who had been in the safety of the Dome for the past nine years would have been terrified to leave it, but not Partridge.
That's not to say that I didn't have a couple of problems with this book. First of all, the author is asking you to suspend your disbelief by quite a bit. It's hard to believe that people could be fused with other people. or even animals, and both being would still be able to live. This takes a bit of imagination, but the rest of the book was so good that I got used to the idea after a bit. Secondly, the author writes in the present tense, which was not quite noticeable at first. I could tell as I was reading that something was different, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. One I saw what it was though, it didn't bother me too much--it was just a different style than what I am used to.
Julianna Baggott has a graceful, descriptive writing style, and really knows how to give a good sense of urgency and danger. The first bit of the book was a bit slow, but once it picked up, it never let me go.
Pure is a great addition to the dystopian genre, and I cannot wait to see what happens to Pressia and Partridge in the next book.
Nine years after the Detonations, Pressia Belze lives out in the ruined land, where survivors of the Detonations are forever fused to whatever they happened to be near at the time of the explosions--glass, metal, even other people. Pressia has one hand fused with a doll's head. She lives with her grandfather, who is getting sicker by the day. The worst thing of all is that Pressia knows it's only a matter of time before she has to leave him all alone. It's two weeks before her sixteenth birthday--at which time she will be forced to join the OSR, a sort of guerilla regime intent on taking down the Dome.
In a completely opposite world, Partridge Willux lives inside the Dome, and feels like a constant disappointment to his father--the man who designed the Dome. Those who live inside the dome are called Pures. Partridge is a student at the Academy, when one day he takes a field trip and finds out that the mother he believed died in the Detonations may be alive on the outside. So he decides he must escape. When Pressia and Partridge's worlds collide, they bond together and come to discover truths that will turn both of their worlds upside down.
I really liked this book a lot. The world the author created is so despondent, you can feel it coming through the pages of the book. The characters are likable and you can identify with their struggles. I especially liked Partridge, because even though he had no idea what he was looking for or even where to begin his search, he never faltered in the fact that he needed to go out there and find it. Any other Pure who had been in the safety of the Dome for the past nine years would have been terrified to leave it, but not Partridge.
That's not to say that I didn't have a couple of problems with this book. First of all, the author is asking you to suspend your disbelief by quite a bit. It's hard to believe that people could be fused with other people. or even animals, and both being would still be able to live. This takes a bit of imagination, but the rest of the book was so good that I got used to the idea after a bit. Secondly, the author writes in the present tense, which was not quite noticeable at first. I could tell as I was reading that something was different, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. One I saw what it was though, it didn't bother me too much--it was just a different style than what I am used to.
Julianna Baggott has a graceful, descriptive writing style, and really knows how to give a good sense of urgency and danger. The first bit of the book was a bit slow, but once it picked up, it never let me go.
Pure is a great addition to the dystopian genre, and I cannot wait to see what happens to Pressia and Partridge in the next book.
jenpost78's review against another edition
4.0
I really enjoyed this story. It took me a bit to get past some of the outrageous mutations described, but by the end of the story they seemed more believable for this apocalyptic future.
ladytiara's review against another edition
4.0
I sometimes avoid post-apocalyptic novels, because I have a tendency to get freaked out by them, but Pure sounded really promising, so I took a chance on it. I'm really glad I did because it's a fantastic book.
Sometime in the future, a nuclear attack decimates the United States. Some people were already living in an experimental dome designed to protect them from such attacks, and they survive the events knows as the Detonations safe and sound. Those outside the Dome weren't so lucky and most of them died in the attacks. Nine years after the Detonations, the survivors outside the Dome live a brutal life. They're all disfigured or deformed in some way, missing limbs are common, and most survivors are fused with objects or other people who were nearby at the time of the Detonations. They live in any remaining buildings or rubble, and they survive as best they can under a repressive military regime (known as the OSR) that takes all kids when they turn 16 to become soldiers or target practice. Inside the Dome, life is much safer, but the people live under a different repressive regime that controls every aspect of their lives and performs genetics enhancements on them.
The story centers around several characters. Pressia is about to turn 16. Her face is scarred, and one of her hands is the head of the doll she was holding when the bombs went off. Bradwell is an older teen who's been on his own since the attacks and has thus far escaped the notice of the OSR. He spouts a lot of elaborate conspiracy theories about the how and why of the Detonations. Partridge is the son of the Dome's leader, but he doesn't fit in and he wonders about what's outside. Lyda is another Dome dweller. She helps Partridge, to her detriment. El Capitan is an OSR soldier who finds himself questioning his orders. As these characters' paths cross, their lives intersect and they learn that nothing is as it seems.
I really enjoyed this book. It's not an easy read, in the sense that the descriptions of the horrible disfigurements the survivors suffer felt incredibly real and tragic. But the prose and the story make this book intensely readable and I couldn't put it down. Baggott's descriptions of the post-Detonation ruins are horrific and beautiful at the same time. There are some amazing scenes of the characters traveling across the battered landscape. I particularly liked a scene where some of the characters meet a group of warrior mothers whose children are fused to them. This world really came alive for me. I loved Pressia, Bradwell, and Partridge as characters, and even the minor characters felt very real to me.
I do have some minor complaints. The story is told in alternating viewpoints. Different chapters are from the viewpoints of Pressia, Patridge, Lyda, and El Capitan. I enjoyed the Pressia and Partridge chapters the most. There are fewer Lyda and El Capitan chapters, and while I understand why the author used them (they convey information the reader wouldn't know otherwise), they weren't as effective for me. My other concern is that there are a lot of rather startling revelations and twists in the last third of the book. While they're very exciting, I can't help wondering if the author has revealed too much in the first book (there will be two more books). On the other hand, the ending made me desperate to read the sequel, so perhaps the revelations worked just right.
I received an ARC from Amazon Vine.
Sometime in the future, a nuclear attack decimates the United States. Some people were already living in an experimental dome designed to protect them from such attacks, and they survive the events knows as the Detonations safe and sound. Those outside the Dome weren't so lucky and most of them died in the attacks. Nine years after the Detonations, the survivors outside the Dome live a brutal life. They're all disfigured or deformed in some way, missing limbs are common, and most survivors are fused with objects or other people who were nearby at the time of the Detonations. They live in any remaining buildings or rubble, and they survive as best they can under a repressive military regime (known as the OSR) that takes all kids when they turn 16 to become soldiers or target practice. Inside the Dome, life is much safer, but the people live under a different repressive regime that controls every aspect of their lives and performs genetics enhancements on them.
The story centers around several characters. Pressia is about to turn 16. Her face is scarred, and one of her hands is the head of the doll she was holding when the bombs went off. Bradwell is an older teen who's been on his own since the attacks and has thus far escaped the notice of the OSR. He spouts a lot of elaborate conspiracy theories about the how and why of the Detonations. Partridge is the son of the Dome's leader, but he doesn't fit in and he wonders about what's outside. Lyda is another Dome dweller. She helps Partridge, to her detriment. El Capitan is an OSR soldier who finds himself questioning his orders. As these characters' paths cross, their lives intersect and they learn that nothing is as it seems.
I really enjoyed this book. It's not an easy read, in the sense that the descriptions of the horrible disfigurements the survivors suffer felt incredibly real and tragic. But the prose and the story make this book intensely readable and I couldn't put it down. Baggott's descriptions of the post-Detonation ruins are horrific and beautiful at the same time. There are some amazing scenes of the characters traveling across the battered landscape. I particularly liked a scene where some of the characters meet a group of warrior mothers whose children are fused to them. This world really came alive for me. I loved Pressia, Bradwell, and Partridge as characters, and even the minor characters felt very real to me.
I do have some minor complaints. The story is told in alternating viewpoints. Different chapters are from the viewpoints of Pressia, Patridge, Lyda, and El Capitan. I enjoyed the Pressia and Partridge chapters the most. There are fewer Lyda and El Capitan chapters, and while I understand why the author used them (they convey information the reader wouldn't know otherwise), they weren't as effective for me. My other concern is that there are a lot of rather startling revelations and twists in the last third of the book. While they're very exciting, I can't help wondering if the author has revealed too much in the first book (there will be two more books). On the other hand, the ending made me desperate to read the sequel, so perhaps the revelations worked just right.
I received an ARC from Amazon Vine.
reesethedonut's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
funny
hopeful
mysterious
tense
fast-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? Yes
4.0