DNF Review – Veracity by Laura Bynum (2/5 stars)
Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Dystopian/Science Fiction
Length: 384 pages
Publisher: Gallery Books
Release Date: January 5, 2010
ISBN-13:978-1439123348
Stand Alone or Series: Stand Alone
Source: Borrowed from Mom
Rating: 2/5 stars
“Harper Adams was six years old in 2012 when an act of viral terrorism wiped out one half of the countrys population. Out of the ashes rose a new government, dedicated to maintaining order at any cost. The populace is controlled via government-sanctioned sex and drugs, a brutal police force known as the Blue Coats, and the slate, a mandatory implant that monitors every word a person speaks. To utter a forbidden, Red Listed word is to risk physical punishment or even death.
But there are those who resist. Guided by the fabled Book of Noah, they are determined to shake the people from their apathy, and are prepared to start a war in the name of freedom. The newest member of this resistance is Harpera woman driven by memories of a daughter lost, a daughter whose very name was erased by the Red List. And she possesses a power that could make her the underground warriors ultimate weaponor the instrument of their destruction.”
I got this book on loan from my mom a number of years ago. She had received it through Amazon VIne and knew I as in a dystopian reading phase at the time. I read the first 80 pages of this book and finally stopped reading because those 80 pages were a struggle for me.
This is compared to “A Handmaid’s Tale” by Atwood; there are some similarities but “A Handmaid’s Tale” was way better. Our main heroine Harper lives in a world where a totalitarian government has taken over after an act of viral terrorism takes out 50% of the country’s population. Certain words have been red-listed and if you say them you can be brutally punished. In addition, drugs and sex are provided by the government as a sort of service to the people.
I did find the fact that Harper was a Sentient interesting; this meant that she had certain powers that allowed her to see people’s moods and predict events ahead of time. Unfortunately, the setting and idea behind the rest of this book was much more typical dystopian and I didn’t enjoy it much.
I did not like how the story was formatted. It jumps from the 2020’s to the 2040’s willy nilly; even jumping back and forth between different months during the same years. It was very hard to keep track off and I was constantly paging back through the chapters and checking the timeline to try and put the story together.
The main heroine was not all that engaging; she seems strangely remote and passive. The writing style was hard to read; it didn’t flow very well and I found myself re-reading portions over and over again.
Overall this ended up being a book I had absolutely no interest in. The world, the story, the characters…none of them really grabbed my attention. Nothing here was unique enough for me to put forth the energy required to get through the jumping around and hard to read writing. Not recommended.
This book goes towards the following reading challenges:
– Goodreads Reading Challenge
– Mount TBR Reading Challenge