A review by novelheartbeat
Taken by Erin Bowman

4.0

Taken is a fantastic dystopian that is great for fans of Legend by Marie Lu. If you didn’t already know, this was my #1 most anticipated 2013 release. Did it live up to the hype? Mostly. I did really enjoy it, but it wasn’t as spectacularly epic as I thought it would be.
Gray was a good lead. He was almost completely ruled by his emotions, which was probably why I liked him. It made him seem more realistic.

The romance…sigh. This kind of ruined it for me. At first, it was fine. I didn’t really like Emma and didn’t care about their relationship, but it wasn’t overwhelming and it wasn’t instalove. But then…DUN DUN DUUNNN…yep, the dreaded love triangle. It cropped up in the last third or quarter of the book, and not gonna lie, it kind of ruined my enjoyment of the story a little bit. Because after meeting Bree, Gray started flip flopping back and forth between the two girls. Sigh.

I loved the scene where Gray and Emma see technology for the first time, because the way they thought of everything (magic candles, baha) made it SO convincing that they had never seen anything like it before, and really captured what it’d be like to be the person seeing it for the first time. It was great!

It’s extremely hard to write this review without giving anything away. Because from the synopsis, you have NO clue what is going to happen beyond the Wall, or what you’re in store for. I think that was the best part!
I do want to say that the first part of this book reminded me SO much of The Village (by M. Night Shyamalan). Small sheltered town surrounded by a Wall, with an unknown atrocity killing off anyone who attempts to leave. Seriously, almost exactly like The Village, with a wall instead of those creepy red-cloaked spiky things. So, of course I started coming to my own conclusion of why they were really stuck in Claysoot and what was actually behind the killings – I’m not going to tell you whether I was right or wrong, in case you’ve seen the movie ;)

I don’t want to say much else…but the world building was great. The only complaint that I have is that sometimes there were enormous info dumps and it was a bit of a struggle to keep up. The plot was crazy intricate, and there was a LOT to stuff into my poor little brain in a very short span of time. But it was fantastic! Very well thought out.

Something I thought was interesting was how the people who were given less were the ones that lived in harmony; those given more were the first to fall to chaos. Very interesting, indeed. And sadly, I think it reflects on the world today. Again, this is why I love dystopians so much. To see what an author depicts as a possible future.

Favorite quote:
If my black hair were feathers, I might outshine even the bird’s gleaming darkness.
I don’t know why, but I just love that line.

OVERALL ASSESSMENT
Plot: 4.5/5
Writing style: 4/5
Originality: 3.5/5
Characters: 3.5/5
World-building: 4.5/5
Pace: 4.5/5
Cover: 5/5