The Young World

Book Title: The Young World

Author: Chris Weitz

Series: The Young World #1

Date Started: September 7th 2014

Date Completed: September 9th 2014

Genres: Dystopian, Thriller, Action, Adventure

Rating: Two stars

Review:

I wasn’t expecting The Young World to blow me away, but I thought it would be entertaining and slightly more series to the typical dystopian setting with kids running around in groups. Unfortunately, I was wrong. This book ended up feeling actually quite childish in most aspects and I just had to put it down because I was getting so caught up in everything but the story.

Jefferson is the leader of one of the teenage gangs roaming New York after the illness took out all the younger and older people. No one knows why it happened, but Jefferson and his tribe are too busy protecting themselves and the people they love from the gun cults and mock-militia ready to threaten them around every corner to have time to work it out.

The main reason I wasn’t able to stick with this novel was the writing style. There were far too many bad habits in the narrative and it felt both like the author was being lazy and was trying too hard.

The little bits of script just tampered with the flow of the writing too much for me, and I don’t understand how it contributed anything to the overall voice. Furthermore, the narrative was trying too hard to mimic that of a teenager: it was just the stupid things they thought about in their situation, but also the overuse of slang words; jumping back and forth between various things; italics representing the character's thoughts when you’re already reading from their direct perspective! It came to the point where the narrators just became unbelievable, childish and frankly annoying.

As far as I read, I couldn’t find any direction in the story. There was an awful lot of information dumping - with no real explanations for the important stuff, and the incompetent character relaying it - and no threat or fear that I connected with. There was basically no build up, if any, to events so even when something that I assume would be significant in the grand scheme of things happened, it gave no more impact than the rambling explanations.

The continuity was also a little all over the place (I’d like to know how they can use this vast collection of weapons) and quite honestly the romance was ridiculous - if you could even qualify blurting out love with a mechanical nature within the first couple of chapters romance.

I’m sad to say I didn’t connect with any of the characters, and due to the number of strange nicknames in quick recession most of the people just blended into one since I couldn’t see any defining qualities.

My one big moan about this book was the very typically male portrayal of the girls. I loved the fact that the main - and pretty much only female lead - was kick ass, but that doesn’t mean that that’s all she’s worth as a character and person. I’m not really happy with her being the ‘slightly unhinged girl-power chick’ and then all the others girls being practically non-existent. (And I’m not convinced that the protagonist disapproving of girls being sold for livestock makes up for the fact that it’s never mentioned again and he does nothing about it.)

I started skim reading very quickly, and like I said, eventually gave up on the book. Pace-wise it wasn’t that nothing was happening, it was just that the things that did happen weren’t thrilling or exciting and the plot didn’t seem to be progressing.

It’s a shame that I didn’t enjoy The Young World. I think I was expecting it to be much more mature Young Adult reading than it ended up being. So perhaps if you’re just getting into YA fiction, or are a fan of Gone (which I also didn’t like, but would compare this to) you might get along with it better than I did.

Image Source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22078263-the-young-world