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A review by 2manybooks2readin1lifetime
Secondborn by Amy A. Bartol
3.0
Interesting story but it did remind me of a lot of other dystopian novels, especially Divergent and Hunger Games. The characters needed a bit of fleshing out; lots of goodies and baddies and instant friends, foes and physical attraction. The hero happens to sit down next to an engineer on her first day, who is brilliant and goes on to develop a best selling weapon, her first outing on a battlefield and she happens to save a powerful enemy and imprint his crest on her hand. I worked out the "surprise" about Hawthorne fairly early on. The basic premise is simple enough (a caste system based on birth order), I thought that might be a tad unrealistic* (wouldn't most secondborns just bump off the first born?) and wouldn't work. I was quite curious about if there was a cut off point for birth order ie if your elder sibling died when you were both in your, say, 90's would you and your family automatically go up a notch in status or does it get cancelled out when the firstborn has their first child? So, it did make me think a bit.
The hero is a clean-living kind of gal (apart from the fighting/killing), loves her shitty family, one monogamous relationship, no hard drinking, drugs or bad language, despite starting off as a soldier in a base with thousands of other soldiers and spending time on battlefields. I am not sure what age this book is aimed at.
My biggest bugbear with the book was that apart from being a natural leader, intelligent, pollitically minded, super strong, brilliant with weapons and very able to take care of herself, it was heavily implied that she was drop-dead gorgeous. Why in this image-conscious age, couldnt she be normal or her beauty and figure not be commented on at all? Her looks had nothing to do with the plot.
But basically I did enjoy the story, just didnt love it, and will probably read the next in series to find out what happens next.
*fantasy novels have to follow some sort of rules or they dont make sense!
The hero is a clean-living kind of gal (apart from the fighting/killing), loves her shitty family, one monogamous relationship, no hard drinking, drugs or bad language, despite starting off as a soldier in a base with thousands of other soldiers and spending time on battlefields. I am not sure what age this book is aimed at.
My biggest bugbear with the book was that apart from being a natural leader, intelligent, pollitically minded, super strong, brilliant with weapons and very able to take care of herself, it was heavily implied that she was drop-dead gorgeous. Why in this image-conscious age, couldnt she be normal or her beauty and figure not be commented on at all? Her looks had nothing to do with the plot.
But basically I did enjoy the story, just didnt love it, and will probably read the next in series to find out what happens next.
*fantasy novels have to follow some sort of rules or they dont make sense!