Monday 11 January 2016

Pure - Julianna Baggott

A Spoiler Free Bit About The Book

I was going to just post the blurb here but I couldn't be bothered to type it out. Instead I'll try and explain what Pure is about.

Pure follows Pressia, a wretch, living after the Detonations which fused people to other people and objects.

And a Pure, Partridge, who lives inside the Dome and was safe from the Detonations.

"When Pressia meets Partridge, their worlds shatter."


My Review

So you get the picture. 

I was pretty excited about picking up this book because I've always been a fan of post-apocalyptic books. When society gets split down the middle in such an extreme way, it's usually a great read so I knew Pure had great possibility.

And I was right, the idea is really good, fascinating actually. Both inside and outside the Dome the characters had their issues and dreams and fears and it was really interesting to read one and then the other and absorb how different the cultures were and how little they knew about each other.

I didn't have that many issues with the plot. It wasn't perfect, sometimes I got lost, but I was on board.

Once that melted away and I was stuck with what was left, I was less than impressed.

The main problem I had was that the story seemed too big for the author. Don't get me wrong, Baggott is talented but this story seemed far too ambitious and she seemed terrified to be writing it.  I could feel her fear through the words.

There was a lot of telling and not showing, especially at the beginning of the story. About 50 pages in there was a chapter that was pretty much all telling. Pressia just summed up a great big mass of information that she'd just been told. The information sounded pretty interesting but I got lost easily and I had no idea why we couldn't be part of the conversation Pressia was listening to, especially as this was so close to the beginning and I still had no idea what was going on.

The telling and not showing got extremely painful in no time at all. It's one of the first skills I try and teach people about writing. It was incredibly grating to have to read so much of it.

I didn't have any problems with the characters personalities or decisions or back stories or anything like that but I did have a huge problem with the point of view (POV). Each chapter is given a POV character which is not uncommon in YA, in fact, I mostly expect it a book like Pure, but for some reason Baggott felt the need to head-hop. The first time I noticed it was in a Partridge chapter when it said: "she doesn't know why". Hang on, she? Is that a typo? She meant Partridge right? Oh no, actually, she's telling us what Pressia thinks even though Partridge isn't a mind reader! The book might be written in the third person but you can't set up POV characters for each chapter and then start head jumping!

As it was, the third person didn't sound natural and was pretty distracting. Not that I have anything against the third person, it's just at times it sounded like this book should've been written in the first person.

I wasn't sure whether I should put this point in but I'm going to anyway - the action sequences. Now I wasn't going to include this because I've only just started writing real action sequences myself and I know how hard and demanding they are but the ones in Pure really did leave a lot to be desired. At times there were too many words and I got confused about who was doing what and who was hurt and whatnot. Again, I don't think the third person helped here.

Pure had all the ingredients to be a book I truly loved but there was something not quite right in the execution.


Evaluation

Overall 5/10 - I feel harsh putting a 5 but there we are.

Would I recommend it? No. It was too far from perfect to recommend, though it did have some great ideas.

Would I look up the author? No. Like I said above, it was too far from what I was looking for and I won't be reading books two and three.


Pure had the set up to be amazing but there was something off about the execution.


Molly Looby
Author / Editor in Chief at Molten Publishing / Freelance Editor / Writing Coach / Reviewer / Blogger / Wrimo / Movellian / ZA Ready
molly@moltenpublishing.co.uk

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