Shatter Me Trilogy

I promise my next review won't be combined, but school is stealing my life away from me at the moment. Anyway, here's yet another review of an entire trilogy. This time around, I review the Shatter Me Trilogy.

The Shatter Me Trilogy by Tahereh Mafi

I'm gonna be honest with you, it took me some time to get into these pretty little boxes of words. The main character has a lot of character development, which is good, but character development requires a weak start, which requires patients. I don't know if you've noticed, but I don't have 'patients'. I want it and I want it now. The writing style is beautiful and very poetic and unique, but this also kind of placed a gap between me and Juliette. (I'm going to misspell her name so often in this review.) I needed until about half-way through the second book to really like her and root for her. It's a pretty 'artistic' book and I really liked that, so I would say this is actually worth picking up.

I'm too lazy to write a summary myself, like I normally do, so I just copy-paste it from Amazon:

No one knows why Juliette's touch is fatal, but The Reestablishment has plans for her. Plans to use her as a weapon. But Juliette has plans of her own. After a lifetime without freedom, she's finally discovering a strength to fight back for the very first time -- and to find a future with the one boy she thought she'd lost forever.

Or as xtinemay from polandbananasbooks puts it: "Girl falls in love with the first boy that ever talks to her."

When you should read this:

-if you like hot but messed-up boys.

-if you're in desperate search for a dystopian love story.

-if you love character development and pretty, unique writing styles.

Ratings:

-Shatter Me: 3 stars

-Unravel Me: 3,7 stars

-Ignite Me: 4,22 stars (This is just the problem with me and my star ratings. They become more detailed every time to the point where they should have about eight numbers behind the comma.)

The following will contain spoilers for the entire Shatter Me Trilogy. Read at your own risk.

World Building

I'm not going to lie, the main focus in this book is not on the world or the war or government. This is not the Hunger Games or the Maze Runner or something like that. This is about individual strength and also about who you choose to be with and what you base this choice on. Still, the world is not something to glance over. The world reminded me of the Soviet times, like so many others. The government convinces the citizens they are the last hope for society and they are handed all the power to eventually imprison all of society. I don't think this world and its down fall stood out compared to its brothers and sisters. We have seen the evil dictator being an @ssh0le so many times now. People divided into 'sectors,' 'districts,' or other zones. But I think the X-Men aspect saves this world from being one of the many. I like the concept of dystopian meeting super-natural. It's a good backdrop to the more personal storyline of these books.

Plot

The plot I had no real 'problems' with, but it isn't my taste exactly. I liked how everything is so personal and seen from Juliette's perspective. What I did not like, was the last-minute saving of the world.

Dear Young Adult authors,

I think there's something you should all know. You all need to realize, rather sooner than later, that your last book

CAN BE A LITTLE LONGER!

I don't know what it is. Maybe they grow tired of their own storylines or just run out of ideas, but this is a serious problem. Some stories grow so big, so loved, and have such complicated problems to solve, that they need a lot of pages. And no one knows why, but some authors seem afraid of writing a fat last book once in a while. Don't get me wrong, I loved Mockingjay, but I would have loved it even more with a hundred more pages of district action. (We're getting near November in my brain, guys. Forgive me for my HG references.) The ending of Ignite Me felt too rushed. Maybe it's because I read it at midnight and I was really tired and delirious, but it felt like we were killing our evil dictator in a matter of seconds and the government-of-Soviet-references was thrown down in less than a day. When I last checked, war took months, seasons, and even years. But a day?

The first book, as I said, didn't really got me hooked or anything, but the plot's not bad. I like how we start at the asylum, where it's cool and creepy, and then we shift to Warner's rich-boy military base where we don't know what he really tries to do. The escape to Omega Point did get me a little excited.

Let's talk about Omega, by the way.

My first reaction: Oh, so this is what would happen if Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters and District 13 got a baby. So the next thing to do was basically to find out whether Castle was a Charles Xavier or a President Coin. I was pleasantly surprised. (And yes, a lot of my comparisons contain two aspects of a mainstream fandom mating.)

Characters

So Juliette starts of very weak and dependent on Adam. I did not root for her like I should have. But I read these books at the start of a new school year in which I have a completely different set of classmates. Since I'm a socially awkward, unfriendly person and get nervous and uncomfortable easily, I also found it slightly relatable. Because sometimes life s1_1cks and you don't care how weak you are. You just wish you could fall apart physically so everyone could see just how miserable you feel. I could gradually try to grow along with her. I could especially relate when she was told to make friends at Omega Point. I want to make friends, but that's a little harder for me than for a bunch of other people. Everyone keeps telling you 'just' to go talk to someone. That's not entirely fair though, is it? When I go to my friend who has a cold, she doesn't want me to walk into her room and be like, "Hey, why can't you just go and stop hoarding snot in your nostrils?" If you're also introvert/socially awkward/rather alone than in a crowd, you should take a look at this genius relatable list with funny pictures.

We'll take a look at Adam and Warner later, since their main purpose is being points in our love triangle.

Kenji was one of my favorite characters. He's funny and he says what he means. I also loved his conversations with James. They are so cute.

I think most of the characters are nice to read about and quite interesting. No cardboard here.

Romance / love triangle

It's the basic design for a love triangle. Girl falls in love with boy and boy falls in love with girl. Other boy falls in love with girl and girl falls in love with him. Girl can't choose.

I am always a little iffy on love triangles, because there are some really awful ones out there. But this one didn't feel that love triangly, I-want-to-rip-out-my-eyeballs-and-throw-them-at-the-main-charactery. This one felt like the main character tried to sort out whether her first crush was a thoughtless and childish instalove or actually the eternal love she thought it would be. And I liked that. I really did.

I didn't even know more people had this!

Adam holds her down, but he's also sweet and caring. I could imagine her loving him, but not his influence on her. In the end, looking back, I can also understand he longs for something good in a world that has crumbled in his fists. I didn't like him from the start, though. He was too perfect. I like characters to be perfect in their stronger spots, but also in their flaws.
Warner I knew would be her other love interest, and I preferred him to Adam pretty soon. That was again because Adam just didn't have enough layers for me to find him an interesting character.

This book series really should be read in its entirety to be fully appreciated (says someone who hasn't read the novella's). I was really annoyed at first with Adam and Juliette being together, because he weakened her and because their love story was kind of insta-y. But watching Juliette discovering this herself and realizing there are more options was just... It makes you look back and be like, "Oh, so that's where you were going with this." I appreciate that, because not many authors do this that much. Props to Tahereh Mafi. (I probably pronounce your name wrong.)

There are some interesting family relationships going on here. It's not super original, (I'm looking at you, Tobias Eaton) but somehow the dropping of the I-am-your-father bomb still entertains me. It just gives you these nice oh-you-didn't moments I really enjoy reading in public. Can anyone relate to the scenario where your mouth falls open when you read a book on your phone, but you're reading it in a public space and everyone stares at you and you know people are like, "Did her boyfriend just dump her or something?"

Writing style

I had an on-off relationship with this writing style. On one hand, it is beautiful and the descriptions and comparisons are so perfect and truthful that I wanted to forever store these beautiful words in my eyelids to look at them whenever I feel like it. (Is that weird?) But it also kind of sometimes makes Juliette seem over-dramatic and childish. The cross-outs are something different and it gives you an idea of her emotional state, but it also is a little tiresome now and then. Overall, beautiful words, frustrating protagonist in the first two books. The last book is a win-win: pretty writing with proactive protagonist.

Action scenes

Action is not the strongest point of these books. The powers obviously add something special to the fights, but it's not like anyone should read this book because of their physical aspect. We focus on emotions here. The action was so-so and I honestly thought some of the discussions about future fights in Ignite Me sound a tiny bit cheesy. I did really enjoy all the different abilities and people being shot and healed and touched and almost died, but the action itself wasn't spectacular.

The ending

I thought this was such an interesting ending. She can touch people, chooses Warner, fights the Reestablishment one last time and wins, and then we stop. What's gonna happen? How will Juliette rule Earth without becoming a power-hungry dictator? Okay, some of you might not question this. But I don't really believe it's possible to rule the world without going crazy or almost going crazy over time. The world = a lot of people = a lot of responsibility = a lot of pressure. Plus, seizing power takes some violence, but keeping power is a whole other story. You're constantly at risk of being assassinated or threatened. I would've liked another book series two years later, once Juliette has ruled Earth for a while.

My reading schedule for the rest of this year

You should know that I'm the kind of person who makes schedules for everything. So I've already did some math and thought about the amount of pages I will be able to read in the couple months we have left of 2015. Here's a simple list of things I will do in 2015.

1. I read the Legend Trilogy. I'm already half-way through the first one and it's GOOD.
2. Once I've finished Legend, I will read the Harry Potter series for the very first time in my life. This will probably claim a lot of my time (with point 3) and attention, so prepare yourself for a couple of months filled with the experiences of a Hogwarts newbie. I hope to review every single book and movie (but we all know how good I am at keeping this promise).
3. Either somewhere in between or after I've finished Harry Potter (most likely in between) I will read Winter, the final book in Marissa Meyer's Lunar Chronicles. This is my most anticipated new release of this year, so I'm super excited to finally start this 800-pages treasure. I will join the booksplosion of this book in December (haven't done that before, so I should probably try to find out how it works first. :)
4. Reasons I love this year's November: A. Winter. B. Mockingjay. I usually don't go to the cinema to watch my movies. *coughs* I watch them illegally. *coughs* Anyway, there's always just this excitement when the movies I'm waiting for reach the cinemas. You know, when the trailers finally start to crowd YouTube commercials and I get to see them on TV and I'm trying my hardest not to grin.
5. Another thing I expect in November: an actual Allegiant trailer (I might discuss the other one) that's not just a recap of amazing movie 1 and kind of not so amazing movie 2 with a little shizzle that gets me even more nervous for this March.
6. I hope to finish the plot building of the first book in a story I want to write. Obviously I won't post it or anything. Just so you know what I'm planning this year.