Review: The New Dark by Lorraine Thomson

The New Dark by Lorraine Thomson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I received a copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.  This book will be released on November 1, 2017

I requested a copy of this because it sounded really interesting and I will say it has alot of good plot elements and ton of potential. I felt a bit mislead by the summary.  It unfortunately just didn't deliver for me, I felt there were many things that were under developed and I just didn't engage with the writing style. The writing was a bit disjointed for my taste and I often felt like I missed something. I found myself going back to see if I skipped a page or missed a paragraph where something happened only to find that the information was simply not there and you had to infer what happened. Fortunately there normally enough context clues to figure out what was going on, sometimes I was just left confused.

I like dystopian settings, and this has an interesting twist where people are living in city environments and in the wilderness fending for themselves but there are mutants. I would have loved if the mutant aspect was explained, the author mentions viable and unviable children but never really explains what that means and how mutants came to be. Typically in dystopian or post-apocalyptic books, there is some long forgotten event that caused society to be in whatever situation they are in, but the main character Sorrel often speaks of her grandmother who lived in the Before time and taught her about things Before. It would have been nice to get an explanation about what occurred the transition from the Before to the After only recently happened and there are people living in the present time that actually know what happened.

Onto the story, the story begins in the town of Amat, a wilderness community where the people live off the land and get on pretty well. Our main character Sorrel is a presented as a brooding teen, when her village is attacked by mutants. The town is destroyed, most everyone is killed, and Sorrel just barely escapes. Sorrel's little brother is taken by one of the mutants and she is determined to go after them and avenge those she's lost. She also hopes to find some of her townsfolk alive, especially David, the boy she likes.  David and Sorrel's relationship is a plot point that was misleading in the summary.  They are described as boyfriend and girlfriend.  I have to disagree.  While they do clearly like each other, they aren't actually in a relationship.  They say a few words to each other in the beginning of the book, but then they spend the rest of the book trying to get back to each other.  Everyone is trying to keep them apart, but they were never actually together.  But I digress...

Sorrel ends up in this creepy cult town with the people called the Free. They are led by Martin, who made my skin crawl, I think he was supposed to have that effect. The Free believe that everything Martin says is law and that he can do no wrong.  It is pretty creepy.   I give Thomson credit for the icky feeling I got when I read this part of the story since it definitely delivered on the creep factor.    David along with everyone else the mutants left alive are sold into slavery by the mutants, while Sorrel's brother Eli is being well cared for by his new mutant protector. Sorrel eventually escapes Martin and the Free with the help of, Einstein, a mutant the Free were keeping captive and torturing. Sorrel and Einstein end up in the town of Dinawl in an attempt to find David and Eli. As you can imagine, she finds nothing but trouble and she also finds a resistance movement. Still fueled to find those she loves, she puts her trust in the resistance movement and begins to fight for the future.  Sorrel has a birthmark and it resembles something from the Before so she decides to something akin to Katniss and the Mockingjay from the Hunger Games.  The face of the revolution and the change that needs to happen to overthrow the corruption in society.  That part was fine but nothing we haven't seen before.  I found Sorrel to be irritating and immature, and I just don't see her being a revolutionary that saves the world as she is.  She has alot of growing up to do yet.