A book sucked out the darkest corners of fiction. A grotesque and nightmare worthy apocalypse with a soul sucking world building that will draw you in for more and more. It is new and dauntless, twisted and deliciously dark.
3.5/5 Stars
Recommendation: This book is not for everyone. Fact is, despite being shelves as YA —probably because of the young age of the main characters—, this book really strays from the typical YA formula and it is refreshing for those who can appreciate an intelligent book that thrives in its world building, but that lacks an important romantic subplot. Despite regular YA dystopias, this book is rather slow paced as well, leaving plenty of space for nit gritty details and a well established environnent.
So this is probably one of the best movies you are ever going to watch and it deserves love because of that. In fact, the book itself will happily let you know that the “Film rights sold to Fox 2000 Pictures with Karen Rosenfelt, lead producer of the Twilight saga” and I will very much agree I’d gladly sell myself to go see that movie. It has so much potential for beautiful post apocalyptic settings, expensive CGI creatures and diseased, fused up people as well as great production value for the Pures in a similar style to Netflix series: Stephen King’s Under the Dome.
… But it might be just that, because as a novel, there really isn’t so much more. Boy is this bleak. And as I’ve said previously, I can’t only review potential and neither can authors live solely off of it.
Now just as a general disclaimer the stars I hand in my reviews are based on my opinion on the actual writing and the book as a piece of literature. So the book’s quality. Not whether or not this was an enjoyable read.
Because boy does this book hook you.
Pure is a post apocalyptic dystopia that centers around two young characters— Pressia, a wretch who was fused with the head of a doll during The Detonations, the world bombing event that lead to the world’s demise. And Patridge — A Pure from an influential family who inhabits the Dome, the world’s only remaining safe haven were the richest and most important families reside, safe from the Detonations and outside destruction.
However, fact is that Pressia isn’t the only one carrying scars from the End of Days— The blasts of the Detonations were so strong that the entire population fused to the objects, animals people nearest to them. People’s vital organs connecting them to the asphalt of streets, babies protruding from necks, tormented souls living with animals eating and their inside. There is such brutal attraction in Baggott’s vivid descriptions of Earth’s utter destruction and the devastating deformities of the survivors. Pure constructs an immensity sinister world that is both smart and simply gut clenching. This apocalypse isn’t dreamy, nor filled with your next book boyfriend, it is frightening, bone biting with grottesque and unfiltered descriptions that are nightmare worthy. Think how you felt during that one explicit documentary we’ve all watched for our history lessons about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The World that had ended and was painted black, nothing but ashes. That is Pure as a book.
The book is told in multiple POVs, the main ones being Pressia’s and Patridge’s before multiple other characters began narrating chapters… that is where the book began going downhill for me. Because Patridge lives within the dome, it makes sense why his character was rather close minded in the beginning and had to play the part of the dumbed down rich white boy who doesn’t understand what’s really going on outside. However, there are many ways to make this type of character interesting in my opinion, but Patridge fell short for about the first 100 pages or so and I was never able to look forwards to his chapters or able to root for him despite feeling devishly curious on what went on within the Dome.
As a main character, Pressia is fierce and imposing. She is a well deserved break between YAs damsels in distress who suddenly develop/are born with the world’s most dangerous power/ability and the strong, moody “I don’t need men or anyone to ever help me” who makes you roll your eyes deep into the back of your head. Her strength as a character and her development of said physical and mental strength was greatly written and highly praisable, the issue is that I was never able to connect with her. I was never sure on how to feel about her and even after two books I’d have trouble telling you who Pressia really is. Sad I’m praising her as much simply because she’s not a cliche, but to a lot of people this seems to be enough for them and have throughoutfully enjoyed this character. She’s a matter of perspectives.
Oh yeah, perspectives, my issue at hand. While I could understand the duality of the character POVs due to taking place at opposite sides of the Dome (but still doesn’t excuse the need of first person narrators to me, as a book that strayed so far from YA feels unnecessarily juvenile again just because of the inclusion of these), the switch between minor characters was rather distracting and unneeded. While I grew close to most of the characters like Lyda or Il Capitano because of they’re overall originality and refreshing arcs, I didn’t need to be able to listen to their every thought to continue with the story. I found it very distracting, they were like that one friend you click with so much better when you don’t know about their every quirk and eccentricity. And you specially don’t need them expressing them when you’re in the middle of an important project, or well, you know, saving the world.
There were a few more odd moments and issues with the book. Despite its amazing set up and the detailed explanations of the world the survivors inhabited, the domestic politic side inside the Dome was completely flawed and lacking. As a dystopia, the most important part of your book isn’t going to be some cheap romance, good writing, or pacing, the most important part is going to be the social structure. If your social structure is lacking, you long failed as a dystopia. The Dome itself felt slightly underdeveloped and the entire political structed in there was lacking as well. There were a lot of conversations about war and the Dome’s own plans with the outside world that begged to be called intelligent, but turned out more snore worthy and dragged out.
But anyway, as I typed this, I realize how hard it is to make this book sound good on paper. Even my description of the events isn’t very moving, and funny enough, Goodreads doesn’t even have a summary of the events for what I’d like to think are similar reasons. Between the summary and all my talks about this book being grottesque and nightmare inducing, and maybe not the general YA’s crowd cup of tea, I ask you to trust me when I say this book is good. It might not be the book for everyone, but it is the type of book you must give a chance to once in a life time. It’s clever and well imagined and its world deserves a shot at you reading it.
It’s a quality dystopia for those who are looking something more out of their typical YA reads.
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