13 June 2014

Paradigm by Ceri A. Lowe

Series: Paradigm #1
Publication date: June 13, 2014
Publisher: Bookotoure
Genres: YA Dystopia
Format: eArc
Source: received from the publisher through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review
Pages: 382

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  What if the end of the world was just the beginning?

Alice Davenport awakens from a fever to find her mother gone and the city she lives in ravaged by storms – with few survivors.

When Alice is finally rescued, she is taken to a huge underground bunker owned by the mysterious Paradigm Industries. As the storms worsen, the hatches close.

87 years later, amidst the ruins of London, the survivors of the Storms have reinvented society. The Model maintains a perfect balance – with inhabitants routinely frozen until they are needed by the Industry.

Fifteen-year-old Carter Warren knows his time has come. Awoken from the catacombs as a contender for the role of Controller General, it is his destiny to succeed – where his parents failed.


But Carter soon discovers that the world has changed, in ways that make him begin to question everything that he believes in. As Carter is forced to fight for those he loves and even for his life, it seems that the key to the future lies in the secrets of the past...

I absolutely love dystopia but somehow this book fell a bit flat.. I have no idea whether I want to read the next book or not but maybe you can help me decide that!

Something that I had a hard time understanding in the beginning was the point of views. It is told from two different point of views and what I discovered was that the girl, Alice, is from BEFORE and the boy, Carter, is after - exactly 87 years after. So every other chapter is kind of the background story without really being a background story and the other chapters are set even farther in the future. So keep that in mind while reading it, especially since it took me quite a while to figure it out for sure.

Normally I don't read dystopians with global warming thrown in, so this was a first. I don't know if I actually enjoyed it but it was a nice change anyway. So what actually happens is that it starts raining, and it's not just normal rain. This rain is toxic and make people do weird things and then they die. The rain doesn't stop though, it keeps raining and soon everything is flooded - regular houses doesn't survive, Alice only survived because she lived on the 9th floor!
This company called Paradigm Industries has somehow built a bunker so people can survive, but people who are rescued and taken to this place aren't going to see the sun for years since the Storms only gets worse.. It's kind of depressing.

So 87 years in to the future people are frozen (don't ask me why) and they have to spend some time that way until "their time comes" and they wake up and can create a new life. Our main characters Carter is frozen and stays that way for 15 years, when he wakes his kids are 15 years old just like him (he got a girl pregnant the night before he was scheduled to be frozen) and he has to adapt to society once again.

Needless to say; things start happening and of course Carter doesn't know what to do - should he do what's expected of him or what he wants to do and may believe in?

So that was the general plot and story line, let's move on . I really liked Alice, she was so wise for such a young girl and she said so many things that are basically life lessons, and she somehow reminded me of Alice in Wonderland. I mean look at it this way; she is thrown into this bunker - the rabbit hole and when she gets to the surface years later everything has changed = Wonderland. I know it far fetched, but I think people that have read the book will know what I'm talking about.

I settled on a 3 berry rating for this book.. I was thinking about 4 but it just didn't do it for me. I was bored at some moments and there wasn't really anything I absolutely loved about this book...



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