I don't want to spoil anyone so as usual when reviewing books that could be ruined is too much is said, I have a fine line to walk here so for the sake of those who don't want any details I will say there is a lot to this story that is timely and should make you think, this series is not my favorite of this YA sub-genre, the apocalyptic world stories, I really liked it and have no trouble recommending it.
Now for a more detailed but hopefully spoiler free chat.
I was so angry with Alexandra for a character she killed but as I have been finding more and more (Ned Stark anyone?) authors are not shying away from making us love main characters and then killing them, no more neat and perfect endings where all the principals survive to the end. And that is a good thing for readers and a terrible thing. It breaks our hearts so it's bad. But it treats us with respect, it says life isn't ever all neat and pretty and sometimes people die too soon and the people we love die and those who are monsters live, and that is awful but that is good. It makes story telling more relatable and less clean and doesn't insult the intelligence and ability of the reader, even YA readers who are actually YA people (many adults, myself included love YA stories), to be be mature enough to grasp this concept.
There are important questions raised in In the Afterlight and the series as a whole:
- how much change or subduing should be forced on people who are different, who scare people because of something new or different about them
- should age play a part in how much choice a person has, what age should more autonomy over a person's body begin
- who should decide what is normal and what is different or bad
- how much choice is too much or is there even such a thing as too much choice
- how much or little freedom of the press should there be, where is the line, if there is one, between what people need to know and the rest of a story
Something else worth thinking about is how much of a person's bad acts are the result of what was done to them and how much is just the kind of person they are regardless of what has happened. What I mean is are some people just not nice and destined to do bad things even if the bad things done to them hadn't happened or if nothing bad ever happens to them? And if they are and there was a way to change them should they be changed, if so before or after they start to act badly?
Like I said, there is a lot to think about after reading this and I am sure I barely scratched the surface.
(Finished August 10, 2018)
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