Unwind (Unwind, #1) in 2025 Reading Challenge

Mar 14, 2012 Nadine in NY Jones rated it it was ok

Shelves: young-adult, dystopian-and-post-apocalyptic

from the NPR poll of best young adult fiction

The book everyone is talking about! Well, other than The Hunger Games or Fifty Shades of Grey or about a dozen other books people are probably talking about ... I'd read that this one will make one think about today's pro-choice / pro-life debates. I thought it was meant allegorically, but no. This book quite specifically IS about today's pro-choice / pro-life debates. It takes place in the future (in our grandchildren's time, since ipods are feature from the NPR poll of best young adult fiction

The book everyone is talking about! Well, other than The Hunger Games or Fifty Shades of Grey or about a dozen other books people are probably talking about ... I'd read that this one will make one think about today's pro-choice / pro-life debates. I thought it was meant allegorically, but no. This book quite specifically IS about today's pro-choice / pro-life debates. It takes place in the future (in our grandchildren's time, since ipods are featured in an antique store as from my grandfather's day - a nice touch to let us know what time period we're in) - at a time after the Bill of Life, an agreement that satisfied both the pro-life and pro-choice groups. Now, I can't see how this agreement satisfies ANYONE. But okay. It's sort of sci-fi. The Bill of Life decrees that no fetus and no child shall be harmed, up to the age of 13. From ages 13 through 18, it's a crap shoot. You can have your children "Unwound." That horror being defined on the first page, the book proceeds to follow the stories of several children chosen for Unwinding (Connor, Risa, Lev, and then later other kids are introduced). I can't decide if this is a dystopian story or a horror story.

In the end, I had a hard time rating this book. It was "just okay" ... but 2 stars doesn't seem like enough ... but 3 stars is too much, considering how annoyed I am.

On the one hand: it's well written, the characters are compelling (although, for 13-year-olds, they are awfully wise and mature), the dialogue feels real, the book was a real page-turner, I looked forward to reading it each night, and I was reluctant to set it down. It's horrifying, and yes maybe a little thought-provoking, but ... it's just so completely implausible. I never once felt that this could really happen, the author never convinced me. Sure, some parents are awful and don't love their kids, I suppose, and so okay maybe some parents would have their kids unwound, and yes I can see how state homes might start having older kids unwound, but ... for it to be an epidemic as it's portrayed in this book? No. SO many people have to participate, not just the parents (which, sorry, but no f***ing way do I believe so many parents would sign their kids up for this) but the juvey-cops, the clerks, the guards, the surgeons, and then the patients on the other end all accepting these body parts. No. Just, no. Sure, some adults helped the kids out, but they were the exception, and I just can't believe that would be the case. There would be FAR more adults helping create an Underground Railroad of sorts for these kids. I may sometimes say this country is going to hell in a handbasket, but we aren't THAT far gone.

In the end, this book suffers from the same problem that I felt plagued Ender's Game: all the adults are clueless and awful, only the kids are wise and interesting. I'm sure that a teenager would eat this up with a spoon and ask for more, but as a 40-something adult, it just doesn't play for me. Also, many male characters, but only one strong female character (just like Ender's Game!) I'm wondering if all of Shusterman's work has this same issue.

I really liked the idea of the terms black and white being replaced by umber and sienna, but at the same time, I was completely distracted by the fact that sienna is really a quite dark brown, no where near the color of my "white" skin. I quickly reviewed the paint tubes sitting in my painting bag ... better choices would be Buff Titanium, Naples Yellow, or Yellow Ochre (sure, none of those are perfect matches, but neither is Umber a perfect match). This bugged me far more than it should have.

The sudden mention of ipods in an antique store was jarring. Up to that point, nothing about daily life sounded all that different from today. Kids ride on bikes and have cell phones and carry their stuff in backpacks; tractor trailers haul goods, the drivers pull over in rest areas and sleep in the sleeper cabs of their trucks; police patrol in police cars; there are freeways and public schools and suburbs ... The only mention of something different was a girl who follows fashion by changing the color of her irises, and terrorists who have explosive blood. All of the basic slang is the same as today. So I figured we were maybe 20 years in the future. Not 50! Now, admittedly, I at first thought of MY grandparents, born in the early 1900s - electricity was new, no one had TVs, and most people did not have cars or phones, and they sure didn't have most of our modern conveniences (microwaves and DVDs and ipods and cellphones and the internet and washers and dryers, etc etc). But then I realized, this is about teenagers. My kids are in elementary school now, and their grandparents were born in the mid 1940s, so for a similar jump in time, we can look back to the 1950s. A few changes to day-to-day life: no internet, no cell phones, most people still had party line telephones, TV shows were in their infancy, and the only way to see movies was in the theater. So I expect that same level of change in the time period when MY grandchildren will be teenagers. But I'm not seeing it in this book.

What it IS, is a fast read! I read almost half the book in one go. I'm sure if you have fewer distractions, you could read this in one day. And it certainly inspired me to write a long review! Probably a good book club book, there's a lot to talk about here. ...more

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Aug 14, 2017 Rae Clevett added it

Enjoyed it and now want to read the rest of the series.

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Feb 08, 2014 Emily rated it really liked it

Shelves: fantasy-sci-fi, young-adult-lit, read-in-2014, own-kindle, hfu-2014

Review to come.

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Oct 21, 2019 Erin rated it really liked it

Objectively not 4 stars (more like 3-3.5) but this was the book I needed, at the moment I needed it. And, while I've grown out of the YA formula, I love a good dystopia. So, this fit the bill and did it well. A bit like a YA version of The Handmaid's Tale, without the fatalistic realism. ...more

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