Slightly different format for this post in that it’s a review of three of the six books in The Change series in one post, so it’s a bit of a long one!
Title: The Change. London: Orbital
Author: Guy Adams
Goodreads Rating: 3.63
Release Date: August 2nd, 2012
My Rating:
Genre: YA, sci-fi, dystopianGoodreads Synopsis
WHERE WERE YOU WHEN THE WORLD CHANGED?
One minute everything was fine and the next… they arrived. Those that saw them died instantly. The unlucky ones survived. Now unimaginable things straight out of nightmares roam the streets of our towns and cities. Nothing is impossible. Nowhere is safe. And no one can escape The Change…
I received this and the following two books in a six part series through NetGalley. I hope to buy the final three at some point to possibly get some answers to what’s going on! From the very outset of this book you’re plunged headfirst into this crazy new world.
The first in The Change series being based in London was a great start for me, a familiar setting enables me to get much more immersed into a book than I might do otherwise, so despite the fact that so much had happened that London would be virtually unrecognizable, it still helped me with the world building.
Guy Adams was very descriptive and very creative, there were several harrowing scenes in this book that were very much brought to life through his wonderful use of language and world building. So many things are changed and there’s monsters around every corner, and since our protagonist has lost all his memory of this new world, the reader discovers these new horrors and marvels with him. This book kept you guessing at each page, making it a definite page-turner. That combined with the length meant that I was able to make quick work of this book and finished it in just a few hours.
My biggest gripe with this was just how short it was. It was more like a novella. This could have definitely been combined with one or two of the other books, maybe even all six together, to create one much larger (and more satisfying) book. This book doesn’t really tell you much about the why and how of the change, but since it’s the first of six books then I guess that’s understandable.
I also felt like there wasn’t a whole lot of development of the relationships between characters. Maybe that was due to the short length of the story meaning that there just wasn’t the time to really develop the relationship. Hubcap and Howard were a funny duo and I would have liked to have seen more development between them in particular. Instead it seemed to go from, “Hi stranger.” To, “I’d die for you.” In about five pages.
Overall a fast paced dystopian sci-fi that’s great for a quick read.
Title: The Change. New York: The Queen of Coney Island
Author: Guy Adams
Goodreads Rating: 3.78
Release Date: July 13th, 2017
My Rating:
Genre: YA, sci-fi, dystopianGoodreads Synopsis
Where were you when the world changed?
One minute everything was fine and the next… they arrived. Those that saw them died instantly. The unlucky ones survived. Now unimaginable things straight out of nightmares roam the streets of our towns and cities. Nothing is impossible. Nowhere is safe. And no one can escape The Change…
Grace just wants to find her brother, but she can’t go anywhere without the Queen of Coney Island’s permission to travel.
Now the Queen demands payment and Grace and her new friend, a man in a false beard who believes he is God, must journey into the nightmare world of Dreamland, a tourist park whose attractions are as lethal as they are bizarre.
I’m in two minds about the second instalment in The Change series. Initially it was my least favourite because at times the language was quite juvenile for a YA book, whilst some of the descriptions were quite dark and graphic, so I wasn’t entirely sure what the audience was for this book. That being said I enjoyed the amusement park/carnival-esque setting, and the weird and mysterious things it contained.
‘God’ was a funny and intriguing character. I enjoyed the humour he brought into the story and his back and forth with Grace. Once again, I would have enjoyed seeing more development in this. This is where the shortness of these stories has a really detrimental impact as there just isn’t time for that development or to form any kind of attachment to the characters.
It could essentially be a standalone book as it bears little relation to the first – the characters and setting are completely different, so if you were hoping for some answers from the first book like I was, then you’ll be waiting a while! A perk of this is that you could just pick up this book on its own without reading the first, and you won’t be confused as to what’s going on.
Once again, a fast paced, high action, YA that is an enjoyable read.
Title: The Change. Paris: A City of Fools
Author: Guy Adams
Goodreads Rating: 3.59
Release Date: July 13th, 2017
My Rating:
Genre: YA, sci-fi, dystopianGoodreads Synopsis
Where were you when the world changed?
One minute everything was fine and the next… they arrived. Those that saw them died instantly. The unlucky ones survived. Now unimaginable things straight out of nightmares roam the streets of our towns and cities. Nothing is impossible. Nowhere is safe. And no one can escape The Change…
Loïc’s friend Adrien is gone, kidnapped by the Impressionists, bizarre men made of paint who roam the Parisian catacombs. Now, if Loïc wants to see Adrien again, he must travel to the Louvre and bring him back from the lair of the strange – and deadly – Impressionists.
But the paint-men are not the only threat lurking in Paris, and Loïc must face down the needle-fingered Tricoteuse, the blade-mouthed Madame Loisette, and the dark secrets that haunt the footlights of the Grand Guignol…
This book was my favourite of the series so far. The characters, the setting, the plot. It all seemed to come together in this book. I felt more strongly towards these characters and their relationships than I have in previous The Change books.
This book definitely upped the creep factor. The story is told straight from the main character’s point of view, I’m not sure if that helped to up the feeling of darkness and horror, but I definitely found it more enjoyable this way.
As with both the previous The Change books, the shortness of this book is something of an issue for me. They’re not advertised as short stories or novellas so I’d anticipated something longer and if I had paid for them I perhaps would have felt somewhat cheated.
My slight other issue is that these books left way more questions than they answered. Obviously a large part of that is to encourage readers to carry on reading and get the answers so I’m largely reserving judgement on that until I read the final books, but I do find a book works better if some questions are answered as more are posed, otherwise you’re left with a mountain of answers to provide in the final part of a book or series and it can appear rushed or just there for the sake of answering a question rather than woven into the series. So I am wondering how these books will finish and if that will be the case. I hope not!
This story was action packed, yet nothing got resolved and none of the questions I had since the first book were answered. So overall a great dystopian YA, but there’s definite room for a more detailed and expanded plot.
*All three books received from publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review*
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