I am back with another book review, today it is, Warrior by Heather Todd. Thank you to the author for giving me a copy of this book. I received it at BookCon and while a review was not solicited, I felt I should still write one as this is an advanced readers copy.
Having taken a little bit of a break from dystopian, post-apocalyptic novels, I found this book to be a welcome reintroduction to the genre.
Basically, this story mainly follows a girl, Mary Houston in a world where WWIII is going on. After a failed peace treaty with Russia, the citizens of the United States finds themselves without a president - either he has been captured or is dead - and are essentially at the mercy of a guy who calls himself The Master, who is trying to restore the planet to its glory and save it from the human race. The Master has created an army of soldiers, called Warriors, who are basically Humans 2.0. They are people that have been captured from the streets and injected to become killing machines, all in order to save the planet.
I liked the ideas in this book, and I think there is a lot of promise here in both the writing and the premise, but I just thought things felt a little too rushed, 230 pages is not a lot to squeeze back story, invasion, capture, transformation, deception, and victory. And I think that is the part of this book I struggled most with. This is supposed to be a series, so maybe things will be worked out, but I'm left with so many questions.
Why now, is the Master acting? Who is he? What are his real motives? Is he really just that passionate about the planet? What is in the injection? How does it work? Why are so many of these people willingly a part of the Master's plan? Why cause more destruction? Is there really a safe haven? Why hasn't the Master found it? He seems to know everything else.
I could go on and on. There is just so much of the story that wasn't fleshed out. And even the story itself, technically it takes place over the course of a week, maybe more, but in my head, and in the book, it seems to be at the most over three days. I don't really feel like I got a sense of Mary either. She just wanted to find her family, but then in the span of a week falls for a boy.
That's another thing I didn't love, its so insta-lovey. Literally four days into knowing each other, Xavier and Mary are declaring love. I get its the end of the world and all, but come on. You've just met, she's shy but courageous and he's cocky but handsome, boom match made in heaven.
I just think that if this book is going to be the series that is promise in the About the Author section, I'm not sure what else could happen. This book needed to be about three, and then everything would have been adequately explained. There was no anticipation because the solution to the problem comes in the next ten pages. So much is jammed into this book, that I think it takes away from the story.
That being said, there is a great story here. It's not the most original in the world, but there are so many dystopians these days its understandable. The characters are solid, and the story could be really great, but I think because everything was so abrupt, you get a very shallow look at the story and characters. The bones are good, but the story needs to be fleshed out more.
I was getting lots of Divergent vibes from this one, but also, with the ending, a little but of The Walking Dead (although to be honest, I don't know much more than that there are zombies). This book is definitely different than Divergent, but with the romance with the trainer, heroine trying to save her family/world, etc. it was reminiscent.
Overall, this book has good bones and the writing is good, but things just felt a bit too rushed and I think it could have been broken down into multiple books to help flesh out the story.