Well, I guess I am the unpopular opinion here because, I didn't enjoy this, at all. My question is, "Why is this book hyped?" I know I'm the big outlier here, because this his a 4.50 on Goodreads alone, and my irl friend's absolutely love this book. I'm so confused! I obviously didn't get it, what was the point of the hype in here.


There isn't anything amazing about this book for me to consider it one of the best books of the 2010s decade (which I believe this was on last year). The writing in here is, so bad. Neal Shusterman is an author who tells us instead of shows us, and keeps making the dumbest and weirdest time jumps, and he switches the characters perspectives so frequently that its maddening.


I mean I was reading one paragraph in Citra's perspective, and it was like even though, they weren't?! It was so dumb. And then we jump to two weeks later in Rowan's POV and I was just sitting here like: Umm ok I guess that happened.


It was like Neal Shusterman can't even complete of thought of his character without time jumping or switching to the other characters POV and it just sucked away so much enjoyment for me from the book. I was disengaged and this is one of the reasons I didn't like the MCs.


Speaking of not liking the MCs, yeah I really didn't like neither Citra nor Rowan. Why? Well the reason I listed above, but also because these characters had ZERO personalities. We get the bare bones before they both become apprentices: Rowan is shy, Rowan is "the lettuce", Rowan doesn't like attention, Rowan's family doesn't care about him". whilst Citra was the complete opposite, Citra was a bit self conceited and loved attention, Citra is popular, Citra's family loved her,...and that's it. That's absolutely it. I didn't care because these characters are like bread. And not the grainy kind, they're wheat bread. The bread everyone thinks sucks, which is exactly what I think of these characters. THEY SUCK


These characters also have NO chemistry. You expect me to believe, after seeing Citra and Rowan interact about 10 times, with no past history between them, that they like each other? I mean jeez we haven't even seen these characters personalities (spoiler: they don't have them anyways), and Rowan is all like, Citra is so bold and witty. You know what, no. No these characters have chemistry because they are both as dry as the Sahara Desert, and I wouldn't want to subject someone to dating Rowan or Citra.


Also, what the fuck is the Thunderhead? It was mentioned what it was ONCE (and I obviously forgot what it meant) and then it just keeps referencing it. I'm so confused what it is?! Is it the government, is it the world, is a bloody cloud?!. This world makes absolutely no sense. This system is so confusing, and yes I love sci-fi, this is dystopian (which is a subgenre of sci-fi). However, I don't like sci-fi where we are just aupposed to be believe something and go on about our days. This is one of those sci-fi's. The system and world building made ZERO, NONE, NADA sense.


Overall, I am just baffled by the amount of hype this book gets?! What was the point was what I kept asking myself. This was just really bad and I most likely won't be reading anything from Neal Shusterman again.