Book #139 - Under the Never Sky (Under the Never Sky #1)

Under the Never Sky (Under the Never Sky #1), Veronica Rossi
dystopian
374 pages
Started 12/16/12
Finished 12/26/12
5 STARS

I tend to approach dystopian novels with some amount of trepidation. I've read some I really loved. I've read some that were just a little too far past the weird line for my taste. This is why I waited this long to read Under the Never Sky. I had heard lots of good things about it, but always found myself putting other books ahead of it in my reading queue. Big. Mistake.

Aria has lived a sheltered life. Literally. After she angers the wrong people in her enclosed society, unjustly I might add, she is dumped in the wild world outside her pod and is forced to try and survive on her own for the first time ever. Peregrine is on the outs with his brother after his nephew is taken by the "moles" from the pods. Perry leaves his tribe vowing to get the kid back. Aria and Perry meet under the most difficult of circumstances, but with each other's help, they each try and accomplish their goals despite the lot that fate has thrown at them.

Oh my goodness, I loved this book.

First, the world in which these two teens live is awful and wonderful and exciting. It always amazes me when authors imagine up these worlds so different from the one in which we live now. How do they do it?? The pods and the SmartEyes and the Sciers and the aether storms - they're these otherworldly things dropped in the future America. The strange married with the familiar. So creative and interesting.

I have to say, Aria threatened to bug me at first. There's nothing I hate more than weak female characters who are nothing more than lemmings. From the beginning, Aria tried to break from the mold in which her society cast her. And, when she was dropped in an unfamiliar, savage land, she tried to find the beauty in it and in the people she met.

My heart ached for Perry right from the start. He's a noble guy just trying to live in a hard world and do right by his family. Aria represents everything he detests. And, yet he helps her, and even starts to care for her. He finds it in him to find the good in her.

Great, well-rounded characters. A stunningly harsh and beautiful world. A unique mystery and problem to be solved. And, even a twist at the end that I didn't see coming. Oh yes - I loved this book.