I love dystopian reads and that was both an advantage and disadvantage in reading this. It starts slow, but it does pick up. However, it wasn't difficult for me to want to keep going, because I do enjoy the genre. On the other hand, I found myself making a lot of comparisons to other dystopian titles - generally ones I enjoyed a lot more. For instance, the references to books naturally made me think of Fahrenheit 451 and there were parts that definitely brought to mind a book like Unwind. To be fair, those are two of my favorites of all time, so they are a lot to live up to for another book. Mostly, the book reminded me of the Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld, which is a series that is decent but I just don't love.
Prismatic felt that way for me. There are some great descriptions and the symbolism runs through the story well, weaved in to the narrative in a way that is neither too subtle to be missed nor too heavy-handed to feel forced. The ending is not a cliffhanger, but it definitely prepares you for more titles, and this is apparently a series (I wasn't aware of that going in, as I try to read books with little to no background before starting in order to give myself an honest read). The concept itself is intriguing and unique in many ways, even for a sort of overdone genre like dystopian fiction. It's a combination of the world as we know it and the world as it could be.
What I didn't like was that there were large sections that felt a little like info dumping, especially in the beginning. This is so hard to balance and really, it's almost impossible not to have some of it when creating a world, especially in YA titles, because you have limited words to get a lot out there. I think I would have liked to have seen it maybe later or broken up more, because it made getting into the book slightly more challenging. Again, I think it's worth getting past it, because overall, it's a decent read. I also thought some of the social commentary was a bit in your face, but this is a choice that is also affected by the limitations of length. You need to make sure your audience gets why things are what they are.
Perhaps my biggest issue with the book was that it felt a little too "I've seen this already" for me. I read a lot of dystopian fiction, though, and I think that anyone who doesn't read as much of it would truly enjoy this. It's well-written for the most part and the cliches inherent in the genre are really only obvious to the most avid readers of the style. I personally found the ending slightly cheesy. Again, though, this is a preference, and no fault of the author. I am impressed by her concept and her writing style and I do recommend the book. I suppose to have loved it rather than simply liked it, I would just have needed something that really broke through the saturation of dystopian YA on my e-reader!
I give this 3 out of 5 color spectrums.