Check the Shelf Book Review: Twinmaker

Shannan’s Summary

The future is coded.  Everything from clothes to food to travel exists now through binary code. Everything in life can be written into existence or transported because of boxes that know how to process that code, but someone’s figured out how to improve on that system.  By tweaking the code, you can be made better, prettier, and Clair’s best friend has taken the bait.  But Improvement might not be what it seems, and when a mysterious friend starts communicating with Clair, she wonders how much danger her best friend Libby is in.  What she doesn’t realize is that the target is on Clair’s back, and they’re coming for her.

First Off…

I thought the premise seemed interesting and it was available right away through overdrive so I went for it.

Thoughts:

So the book starts in a world wholly dependent on technology, which seems completely plausible.  Everything from clothes to food to travel are dependent on computers.  It even was interesting when a chain letter that promises to get rid of all your flaws had the possibility of being a virus that changes people.  It started out with a good premise and the main characters were well developed and believable.  But the problem started about a third of the way into the book. It felt like it kept going on and on and could have been cut down a lot.  A lot off it was repetitive, trying to drive points that were already made: some people didn’t like technology, technology might be dangerous, dangerous people are after them.    After the third scene that recapped this I started to get board and just wanted to know what was going on.

Eventually it got around to the point, which I thought was very interesting but at times I got lost in all the details.  There was lot going on by the end and I was trying to keep everything straight.

I’m not really sure what else to say.  While I think the characters were pretty well developed, I can’t say I felt overly attached to any of them.  Even the romance that was going on was difficult to connect with, and I think it had to do with the length.  Really the book could have been about 20 chapters shorter and wouldn’t have lost any of the drive or details.

The Voice:

I thought the reader did well.  I could tell who all the difference characters were and she made the reading dramatic and lifelike.  But since I didn’t connect with the story very well, it’s hard for me to say any more than she did a good job reading.

In the End

It was a well thought out story, just maybe too much.  It needed to have several scenes cut out that didn’t really affect the story all that much.  I might have liked it better if it had been shorter.

10 Second Summary:

1. Interesting and realistic world: I thought the world was well develop and something I could see actually happening.  It was intriguing to see how things possibly could develop over the years.
2. Too Long:  It should have been cut down majorly.
3. Good character development, but no connection:  I felt like I knew the characters by the end, I just didn’t care about them for some reason.

Borrow it.  Not a bad story for a library book, but not worth having on the shelves.