Dark Days - Kate Ormand
Genre: Young Adult / Dystopian
Genre: Young Adult / Dystopian
Edition: http://tinyurl.com/qgn8fa4
Synopsis:
The future world has been divided into sectors--each the same as the other. Surrounded by thick steel fences, there is no way in and no way out. Yet a cyborg army penetrates each sector, picking off its citizens one by one, until no one is left. Behind the sectors' thick walls, the citizens wait to die. Few will be chosen to survive what's coming; the rest will be left behind to suffer. A new world has been created, and its rulers are incredibly selective on who will become a citizen. They want only those with important roles in society to help create a more perfect future.
Summary:
A generic dystopian story pulling on all the clichés of the genre. A predictable bore-fest with an all too anticlimactic ending.
A generic dystopian story pulling on all the clichés of the genre. A predictable bore-fest with an all too anticlimactic ending.
My thoughts:
With a premise like cyborgs selectively killing people who are useless, I had expectations more along the lines of The Matrix and a universe where machines have finally taken over. Unfortunately not.
The story is predictable, lack lustre with very little going on until the last but one chapter which comes a bit too late.
With the limited time to hand, I didn't feel connected to the characters in anyway, and all but most seemed like their generic stereotypes, Mace, the tattooed love interest, Cass, the local bitch(who hated Sia for no apparent reason) and Finn, the all round laid back funny guy. The latter two of which we see little of and appear to be added just to show a bit of variety of the people in the sector. Kyra, Sia's supposedly best friend appears and disappears almost within the same page and we never hear or see her again until the penultimate day. Some friend. All the characters of the book seem flat and pointless, serving only as our eyes in which to witness the story through.
In Dark Days, a world disaster has culled the human population by a significant amount, and what is left of the human race has been hoarded away into sectors in order to keep them 'safe'.
In these sectors, the New Worlders assess each person to determine whether they are viable for the New World. The sector is then notified that their time is effectively up and are given 15 days to recollect their thoughts and reminisce about their short lives before Cyborgs arrive in the sector to rip them apart.
We come to Sia after the initial announcement that her sector is next and she has created a list of things she wants to do with her final 15 days.
This proves difficult as day by day, her sector descends into violence and chaos as others struggle to cope with the inevitable, while Sia has resigned herself to death.
Things grow grim quickly, Sia's mother dies on the sofa from exhaustion and starvation, the fear of what's to come proving too much for her.
Multiple things happen in a short space of time, Sia meets a boy with a gun who makes it his mission to protect her(filling his stereotypical BF role), her Dad is raising an army to fight back, and Sia meets a young girl called Lilly, who absconded her invitation to the New World as she doesn't want to live with monsters.
This somehow kicks off a huge New World overhaul, including infiltrating the enemy city, fake identities, and a anti-climatic bloodbath on both sides.
The plot isn't in anyway believable and I find it seriously hard to believe that the 'New World' would consistently air Reports, day in and day out, of how the Cyborgs are coming to rip them limb from limb. Surely if they didn't care about them, they would get those they wanted out, then simply attack without warning?
It seems backwards and almost inhuman that the New World would wait to get the job done. It's as if, the sector's are merely cattle herds to be ticked off the list.
And there is another thing that bothered me. The New World was so advanced compared with the bland grey prison like structure of the sectors. We are treated to numerous scenes of laser grid protection gates, advanced aircrafts, pristine white washed walls and floors, floors that project landscapes of deserts or jungles or space across them with ease and yet, the menacing and terrifying cyborgs that are to be each sectors end, can be taken out with a hammer to the head.
Sorry, you lost me.
With a premise like cyborgs selectively killing people who are useless, I had expectations more along the lines of The Matrix and a universe where machines have finally taken over. Unfortunately not.
The story is predictable, lack lustre with very little going on until the last but one chapter which comes a bit too late.
With the limited time to hand, I didn't feel connected to the characters in anyway, and all but most seemed like their generic stereotypes, Mace, the tattooed love interest, Cass, the local bitch(who hated Sia for no apparent reason) and Finn, the all round laid back funny guy. The latter two of which we see little of and appear to be added just to show a bit of variety of the people in the sector. Kyra, Sia's supposedly best friend appears and disappears almost within the same page and we never hear or see her again until the penultimate day. Some friend. All the characters of the book seem flat and pointless, serving only as our eyes in which to witness the story through.
In Dark Days, a world disaster has culled the human population by a significant amount, and what is left of the human race has been hoarded away into sectors in order to keep them 'safe'.
In these sectors, the New Worlders assess each person to determine whether they are viable for the New World. The sector is then notified that their time is effectively up and are given 15 days to recollect their thoughts and reminisce about their short lives before Cyborgs arrive in the sector to rip them apart.
We come to Sia after the initial announcement that her sector is next and she has created a list of things she wants to do with her final 15 days.
This proves difficult as day by day, her sector descends into violence and chaos as others struggle to cope with the inevitable, while Sia has resigned herself to death.
Things grow grim quickly, Sia's mother dies on the sofa from exhaustion and starvation, the fear of what's to come proving too much for her.
Multiple things happen in a short space of time, Sia meets a boy with a gun who makes it his mission to protect her(filling his stereotypical BF role), her Dad is raising an army to fight back, and Sia meets a young girl called Lilly, who absconded her invitation to the New World as she doesn't want to live with monsters.
This somehow kicks off a huge New World overhaul, including infiltrating the enemy city, fake identities, and a anti-climatic bloodbath on both sides.
The plot isn't in anyway believable and I find it seriously hard to believe that the 'New World' would consistently air Reports, day in and day out, of how the Cyborgs are coming to rip them limb from limb. Surely if they didn't care about them, they would get those they wanted out, then simply attack without warning?
It seems backwards and almost inhuman that the New World would wait to get the job done. It's as if, the sector's are merely cattle herds to be ticked off the list.
And there is another thing that bothered me. The New World was so advanced compared with the bland grey prison like structure of the sectors. We are treated to numerous scenes of laser grid protection gates, advanced aircrafts, pristine white washed walls and floors, floors that project landscapes of deserts or jungles or space across them with ease and yet, the menacing and terrifying cyborgs that are to be each sectors end, can be taken out with a hammer to the head.
Sorry, you lost me.
In the big unveiling of the 'Secret Army' we have 24 individuals training to fight cyborgs, that's right. Huge human killing machines which a) have destroyed every sector they've been sent to so far and b) may as well be puppies or rabbits as no one knows what the hell they even look like and so can't possibly prepare to fight against them.
Time is limited yet the training comes to end surprisingly early each day, I don't know about you but I would be taking all the time I needed to become a bot-busting machine.
Scatter in some pointless romantic scenes to life the tension and we start to get to the good stuff(and by good I mean mildly more interesting than following a girl wallowing in her own self-pity), Sia finally takes it upon herself to actually do something for the sector and try to find out what their up against.
But how does she do this you ask? No one can leave the sector, the New World only wants those chosen and the cyborg are kept well hidden in the depths of this new city.
That's ok! We'll call on our totally useless girl Lilly who serves only to move the plot forward!
She calls the New World(from a high-tech leaflet that doubles up as a phone) and says she's been left behind (even though she clearly states she refused to go, and so wouldn't she need to say that she changed her mind?). But what's this? Sia goes in her place? OMG what great security these New Worlder's have!
Sia makes it all the way to the New World(without telling anyone at home I might add) and manages to get almost to the end of her initiation into the New World after an unexpected encounter with THE evil genius behind the hole place(Damien Hoist) and his son (Cain, 2 points for the unoriginal names) then she bumps in Finn.
Finn is from her sector and was chosen for the New World but it turns out he's an informer for the Secret Army, but has failed his duties as a spy as he hasn't contacted back home to feed back information.
Finn ushers Sia down to the cyborg level which is surprisingly easy to infiltrate as everyone shrugs off the kids presence as being a 'science project' I mean, seriously? These are supposedly people that were good enough for the New World?
Sia is found out almost as soon as she sees her first cyborg and in a blur of pages is questioned, tortured, incarcerated, liberated and flown back home as if nothing had happened. Allow me to remind you of how ridiculously easy it was for all of this to happen.
After a day everything kicks off and the end of the sector is brought about a day early but I'll leave that enticing final chapter for your, probably glazed over, eyes only.
The setting behind the book is so incredibly vague it is really hard to get a grip on the reasoning behind it, we know something happened, war, climate change, natural disaster? No details means no interest(from me at least). We know there aren't that many people left(so why is the systematic killing welcomed by the New Worlder's?). We only know that the sectors came about as the government put up walls to keep people 'safe'(I'm pretty sure the citizens would not have been happy about this, yet no one reacts or argues it). And we have no idea where the book is set or even what year it is. Vague.
Strangely for a world coming off the back of an apparent disaster of some kind, food, water and electricity are still readily available, where is it coming from? Are there generators? Are there factories? It seems weird that snack bars and packaged cereals would still be in abundance and don't get me started on the pancake mix. WHY?
And despite a few moments where people are attacking the walls attempting to get out, or trying to steal food from those who have it in the streets, there is very little pillaging, fighting and general freaking the hell out missing from the whole ordeal. People don't take the fact that they're going to die soon well. People would be panicking, screaming, hoarding food, stealing food and possibly weapons from others, searching the sector for any way out rather than boarding themselves up in their houses and moping for the next 15 days. Humans have a natural instinct to survive, the end of the world(well, sector) would never be that quiet or simple.
And even when there is danger, you can guarantee a flying unicorn will appear out of nowhere to save her. Whether it be in the form of a boy, a stranger, an aircraft or a bullet, something or someone is always suddenly right there to save Sia, which seems contradictory for someone who persistently enforces that she wants to fight for herself, and fight alongside those that want to protect her.
Then there's the whole selection process which I totally don't understand. I get very well educated and proven teachers winning their place in the New World, the New World needs solid educators which can teach them the ways of being okay with the endless slaughter of hundreds of innocent people. What I don't get is Lilly's family. They are solely musicians. I'm sorry but how do musicians help build a New World? They can't exactly play a flute that builds houses can they? I still can't see why Kyra's family weren't saved, especially since her Dad was an exceptional doctor. Everything is just so conflicting and infuriating.
I was seriously hoping for some huge twist to emerge as soon as we saw the New World, I wanted it to go full Matrix style, with the New Worlder's being cyborgs and those selected being converted or those left behind being released and those taken being made into slaves and there were so many things that could have happened and made this so much better but it just didn't deliver.
Final Word: Could have been so much more but unfortunately didn't deliver on so many levels.
Star Rating: 1 out of 5 stars.
Buy: Nope.
Borrow: If you want an easy read and don't mind a boring angle.
Further Reading Suggestions:
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