![Secondborn by [Amy A. Bartol]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51QSMy58U6L._SY346_.jpg)
As I was devouring this book every now and then I would think ‘this has real writing flaws’ but then I could not put it down. I think that is the sign of a good book. ‘Secondborn’ is enthralling from the dramatic ‘this is my death day’ beginning. It tells of a universe where only firstborn have full citizenship and the next born are pretty much slaves and cannon fodder. It appeals to those of us who grew up in the shadow of the illustrious eldest child. Luckily in real life we escape birth order politics once we leave the nest. Not so in Amy Bartol’s wonderfully created world.
It is the racing plot and the convincing alternative universe that are make this book appealing. But there are flaws. Sometimes there is an emotional disconnect. Characters fall in love and you are not sure why. Momentous events don’t have enough build up and seem to come from nowhere. So the weakness is a lack of gradual plot tension. It’s still very good reading though.
‘It’s agony and relief to watch my life end.’ So begins Amy A. Bartol’s inventive and captivating new dystopian novel. From that opening sentence to the final page, Secondborn’s intriguing contradictions move in a gorgeous dance—a vivid, transfixing romp through a lushly imagined speculative world.
Of course, it’s not all pretty. Our heroine and narrator, Roselle St. Sismode, has long known that her eighteenth birthday will mark the end of her opulent upbringing in the Palace of the Sword, most of it televised for as long as she can remember. Born into the Fates Republic, a society in which only the firstborn enjoy the rights and freedoms of full citizenship, secondborn Roselle is destined for a short and brutal life in the military. But Amy equips her characters with an array of lavishly distinctive clothing, futuristic vehicles, extraordinary weapons and whimsical vocabulary that are as fun as the culture of the novel is horrifying—thirdborns are flat-out forbidden, for example—and the result is a mesmerizing juxtaposition of beauty and terror.
Punctuated by pulse-pounding action scenes, the book balances the cold elegance of the Republic’s inflexible structure with the roiling passion between Roselle and her forbidden lover, Hawthorne Trugrave. With romance, action and cinematic science fiction in equal measure, Secondborn offers a one-of-a-kind, genre-straddling escape into a dystopian world that’s as surprisingly sumptuous as it is alarming. And with a heroine like Roselle at the helm, you won’t soon forget it.
Of course, it’s not all pretty. Our heroine and narrator, Roselle St. Sismode, has long known that her eighteenth birthday will mark the end of her opulent upbringing in the Palace of the Sword, most of it televised for as long as she can remember. Born into the Fates Republic, a society in which only the firstborn enjoy the rights and freedoms of full citizenship, secondborn Roselle is destined for a short and brutal life in the military. But Amy equips her characters with an array of lavishly distinctive clothing, futuristic vehicles, extraordinary weapons and whimsical vocabulary that are as fun as the culture of the novel is horrifying—thirdborns are flat-out forbidden, for example—and the result is a mesmerizing juxtaposition of beauty and terror.
Punctuated by pulse-pounding action scenes, the book balances the cold elegance of the Republic’s inflexible structure with the roiling passion between Roselle and her forbidden lover, Hawthorne Trugrave. With romance, action and cinematic science fiction in equal measure, Secondborn offers a one-of-a-kind, genre-straddling escape into a dystopian world that’s as surprisingly sumptuous as it is alarming. And with a heroine like Roselle at the helm, you won’t soon forget it.
- Jason Kirk, Editor
