YA Addicted Book Club discussion

A girl named Rose is riding her new bike near home in Deadwood, South Dakota, when she falls through the earth. She wakes up at the bottom of a square-shaped hole, its walls glowing with intricate carvings. But the firemen who come to save her peer down upon something even stranger: a little girl in the palm of a giant metal hand.

Seventeen years later, the mystery of the bizarre artifact remains unsolved - the object's origins, architects, and purpose unknown.

But some can never stop searching for answers.

Rose Franklin is now a highly trained physicist leading a top-secret team to crack the hand's code. And along with her colleagues, she is being interviewed by a nameless interrogator whose power and purview are as enigmatic as the relic they seek. What's clear is that Rose and her compatriots are on the edge of unravelling history's most perplexing discovery-and finally figuring out what it portends for humanity. But once the pieces of the puzzle are in place, will the result be an instrument of lasting peace or a weapon of mass destruction?

Who's reading this?

I have no interest in it so I wont be reading but I hope anyone who does enjoys it

I don't really have interest in this one either, so I'm out this month.

This has caught my eye so I'll give it a whirl

Let me know what you guys end up thinking about it!

I've started this one and I think my biggest hurdle is going to be the method of story telling. I'm 10% into the book and so far the entire story has been told in an interview format. It's made it hard to connect with anyone and I feel disconnected from the story. I'm going to keep on plugging on and see where this goes.

That's interesting Gord but yeah I can see why that would be hard for connecting with characters

I finished this up this morning and I'd say 2.5 stars rounded up. I thought it was an interesting idea but I was not a fan of the delivery method. I had some other issues but I'll put those all behind a spoiler wall. Be forewarned I will talk about story specific stuff in the spoiler.

(view spoiler)[
The delivery method made a lot things about this book harder to get into. Normally when you are reading a book, depending on the book, you are generally front row for the events of the book. For this one here you feel like you are reviewing the events after they happened from afar. It created this sense of disconnect from everything. You never really got to see the inner thoughts or feelings of the characters so there was never that relationship built between reader and character. About the closest you could have to a main character would then be the one conducting the interview. The problem there is that the interviewer is this nameless, characterless, entity we know little about. The other problem, and this could have easily been fixed, was that this story telling method made it really hard to gauge the passage of time. You would go from chapter to the next and suddenly 9 months would have passed. You had to discover that reading through the events of the chapter and it just felt odd. It could have been easily fixed as well if the date and time were included in the chapter title. Each chapter started with the file number, who was being interview, and the location the interview was happening. If the date and time was included in that it would be an easy reference so you, as the reader, could say "this chapter takes place a hour after the last chapter" or "this chapter takes place 6 months after the last chapter".

There are also moments in the story where the narrative just felt super forced. The best example of this, in my opinion, was the end of part 2. Part 2 spent all this time building up this relationship between Ryan and Kara as well as the problem with the leg portion of the control set up. The alien race who originally controlled this robot had backwards knees. The relationship then soured as Kara and Vincent warmed up to each other. What can only be described as a heel turn from wrestling Ryan then tries to murder Kara by running her over with a vehicle. Vincent saves her by pushing her aside resulting in Vincent taking the hit himself. Of course his legs are shattered and need to be rebuilt and if your going to rebuild him why not give him the ability to swap his knees around. This whole section just felt clunky, forced, and out of no where. Ryan had been built up as Captain America until this point only for him to suddenly turn into the villain. Later on the author then tries to redeem Ryan as well making this section feel even more strange. This whole section just felt strange. (hide spoiler)]

Thanks for the review Gord!

Thanks!

Yay for finishing it Amelia!