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Los Desamparados (2013)

by Hugh Howey(Favorite Author)

4.42 of 5 Votes: 5

languge

English

genre

Fantasy

publisher

Minotauro

review 1: EDIT: KEEP READING, SERIES GETS BETTER.This is the third dystopian series (Wool, Hunger Games, Divergent) that I've read that has a female protagonist. Each one has left me disappointed at the end because they're all just 007 for women. (Insert female character) is a strong, independent character with skills and character traits that are normally attributed to males. Despite this, said female character completely lucks herself in a situation to have major influence on the plot. The supporting characters are males that are extremely needy and mostly useless except to accent the protagonist as a strong independent woman. The setting and background is a rip-off from a popular dystopian story. The story is entirely plot driven, rather than character driven. The pacing is... more poor with tons of action and fighting followed by filler then a plot twist. By the end of the series, it gets old and mercifully finishes with a rushed conclusion that should've happened about 100 pages sooner.
review 2: After reading the 4th book, I was hopeful that would be the point the series turned around. But at the end of this book, I was yet again disappointed.I'll give a couple of my thoughts about the whole series.First, I didn't like how the author chose to kill some of his characters. I don't have a problem with how it happened or who he killed, but the timing of the deaths left the story feeling disjointed. The author would invest a minimal amount of time to character development (think about 50 pages) and then kill off that person. The lack of substantial character development made their death less powerful. Then in the next book or chapter, I would have to learn about someone new. Another 50 pages, another death. This happened several times (I count at least 4). For me, it broke up the flow of the story and prevented me from getting invested in any one person.Second, I find some parts of the 5th book very unbelievable. When I asked my friend about the part(s) I had a problem with, he told me that those things wouldn't be explained until much later. Now I don't have a problem waiting for stories and explanations to come due. I think that intrigue is necessary to give the story some cohesion and leave the reading wanting more. My issue was that the part(s) I find unrealistic were not presented as mysteries to be explained later. It looked to me like sloppy writing and plot holes.Third, the author continually searched for that perfect sentence. I often felt like the author was trying to craft that phrase that would define the series. It seemed like he was continually trying to get me to underline or highlight a particular passage. For me, that's one of the downfalls of modern literature. I wish authors would rely more on the story to say something important and less on the actual wording (more on that next).Fourth, this book was nothing more than a story. The reason I like reading dystopian fiction is because it tells us something about our society or about ourselves. For example, 1984 tells us the consequences of letting the government take over our privacy. Brave New World tells of a civilization that has decided that reason is supreme and emotions must be suppressed. And as a recent example, even Divergent tells a story about the downfalls on focusing solely on one human virtue without remaining balanced. Maybe this series will have some part of that, but after book 1 that theme does not show itself. I'd expect at this point to have a greater interest in the book than just surface level.Overall, I wouldn't read this series over again. The first story was fantastic, but I would leave it at that. I'm mildly interested in what happens, but probably not enough to invest my time in reading the rest of the series. I'll probably check out the wikipedia pages to satiate my curiosity. less

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