Dualed
If you want an action-packed with death-around-every-corner type of book then this is definitely the one for you.
West lives in a world where only the strongest survive and to be the strongest you need to kill your Alt. The Alt is someone who has the same genetic make-up as each other only raise in different families. Through time, West has lost a lot of her family through Alt killings, with her brother Luc dying in unexpected circumstances. To build herself up to be able to face killing her Alt one day, she become a Striker - a killer for hire.
In a strange kind of way the start of the novel felt like I had started the book somewhere in the middle. It felt like I had missed something essential. I won't deny that the book was action-packed, but I didn't really like or see the point of her senseless killing of other people just because she didn't have the bravery or the self-confidence to face her Alt on her own.
I'm feeling really mixed-up on whether I actually liked West or not. I guess I did in some ways, but in others she came across as stupid - even if I did understand her reasoning behind what she did.I did like how it flashed back to her past and how I could see her relationships with her dead family. She was close to all of them and felt guilt over their deaths, particularly her brother Luc's death.
The pace of the book was good, if maybe a little fast. And, I did like Chord. He was a boy who had faced his Alt, with disastrous results. He tried to keep a promise he had made to his dying friend, although he had trouble doing it. There weren't any secondary characters worth mentioning. Their parts in the story were really short and just there for the continuing of the story line.
The story line itself was brilliant. I've never read a book where the character became an assassin to learn how to save herself. I thought that was really unique. To be honest, this book left me with so many mixed feelings that has me really confused about whether I like the book or not. It's not often a book does that to me.I guess in this case I'll leave it to you, the reader, to decide whether you love it or not.
I would recommend this book to anyone who likes Dystopian novels.As for me, I have decided to go with this rating because as much as things disturbed me about the book, I did, when I weigh up the pros and cons, like it. I just don't think it will be a book I'd read again.
Now for my raiting:-three out of five stars.
