Author: Saruuh Kelsey
Publication Date: July 30th 2013 (first published June 20th 2013)
~A copy was provided by the author in exchange for an honest review.~
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Good and goodness will prevail.
Honour and Horatia Frie are twins living in a world of wreck and ruin.
Forgotten London is a dismal place of containment, rationing, and a four-family-per-house regulation. Twenty five years ago the world was set ablaze when solar flares obliterated three quarters of the Earth’s population and wiped out whole continents in one blow. The flares brought with them The Sixteen Strains: agonizing and fatal diseases that plague each of the forty one zones of Forgotten London and the rest of the world. The only places that escaped fatal damage were two countries now known as The Cities – States and Bharat. The rest of the world – The Forgotten Lands – is contained within borders for the people’s protection against even deadlier Strains outside the barrier. But fifteen year old Honour thinks differently. He thinks that they’re kept inside the fence for other, more menacing reasons. He thinks that States are planning to kill them.
Branwell and Bennet Ravel are twins living in a world of danger and secrecy.
In Victorian London, years before the solar flares hit, the Ravels’ world has just been turned upside down. Their father, poisoned by something even genius Branwell can’t determine, has passed away. His dying words were unnerving orders to keep each other safe no matter the cost, and to hide everything he has ever invented. When one of his creations goes missing – a device named The Lux that can generate unlimited energy – the twins are shocked to discover that their very own government has stolen it and, according to their father’s journals, are planning to use it to create unfathomable explosions to destroy their world.
The Ravel twins will have to find and reclaim The Lux if they are to stop their world’s planned destruction, but when they’re transported to an unfamiliar, derelict world, the search for the device will become harder than ever. Honour and Horatia, against all odds, will have to find a way to stop States before the remainder of Earth is eradicated and their world is lost for good, or somehow get every single citizen of Forgotten London outside of the fence.
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The Forgotten was one I was really looking forward to reading because it has such an interesting concept. You'd think it has the basic YA dystopian setup, the same that every other one has when it comes to a drastically changed world, how things work, how things are abysmal and gritty, but that's where the likeliness stops. It has way more than that. There was a lot of build-up to the end and which way it would go, and it was a little touch and go, which made me scared of a possible, one of my favourite character's kill off, but, the relief!
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Good and goodness will prevail.
Honour and Horatia Frie are twins living in a world of wreck and ruin.
Forgotten London is a dismal place of containment, rationing, and a four-family-per-house regulation. Twenty five years ago the world was set ablaze when solar flares obliterated three quarters of the Earth’s population and wiped out whole continents in one blow. The flares brought with them The Sixteen Strains: agonizing and fatal diseases that plague each of the forty one zones of Forgotten London and the rest of the world. The only places that escaped fatal damage were two countries now known as The Cities – States and Bharat. The rest of the world – The Forgotten Lands – is contained within borders for the people’s protection against even deadlier Strains outside the barrier. But fifteen year old Honour thinks differently. He thinks that they’re kept inside the fence for other, more menacing reasons. He thinks that States are planning to kill them.
Branwell and Bennet Ravel are twins living in a world of danger and secrecy.
In Victorian London, years before the solar flares hit, the Ravels’ world has just been turned upside down. Their father, poisoned by something even genius Branwell can’t determine, has passed away. His dying words were unnerving orders to keep each other safe no matter the cost, and to hide everything he has ever invented. When one of his creations goes missing – a device named The Lux that can generate unlimited energy – the twins are shocked to discover that their very own government has stolen it and, according to their father’s journals, are planning to use it to create unfathomable explosions to destroy their world.
The Ravel twins will have to find and reclaim The Lux if they are to stop their world’s planned destruction, but when they’re transported to an unfamiliar, derelict world, the search for the device will become harder than ever. Honour and Horatia, against all odds, will have to find a way to stop States before the remainder of Earth is eradicated and their world is lost for good, or somehow get every single citizen of Forgotten London outside of the fence.
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The Forgotten was one I was really looking forward to reading because it has such an interesting concept. You'd think it has the basic YA dystopian setup, the same that every other one has when it comes to a drastically changed world, how things work, how things are abysmal and gritty, but that's where the likeliness stops. It has way more than that. There was a lot of build-up to the end and which way it would go, and it was a little touch and go, which made me scared of a possible, one of my favourite character's kill off, but, the relief!
My favourite thing about The Forgotten though, hands down,
were the characters. Separate they weren't that appealing, and it was hard to
distinguish them from the other, especially the ones in 2040, and the fact at
first you don't know the sex of the characters. But together? Their
personalities and differences shone through. The relationship between Yosiah
and Mia, and the twins', was really sweet, and you could tell they would
literally do anything for one another. And they do.
I was fascinated by the Sixteen Strains, and the conspiracy
and cover up of what was really going on, and the zones, but I much preferred
Branwell and Bennett's chapters, which I found easier to breeze through and
kept me waiting for the next. The hole of Bennett's disappearance annoyed me a
little, since I was hoping we'd find out by the end, but we're still left in
the dark when it comes to her, and she was my second favourite, boo.
The world building left nothing to the imagination-which
could argue that it was a little too much, that sometimes a little imagination
is a good thing, and in this case, I agree. It was a little too focused on that
than the plot, that some of that some could easily be cut down, but If I'm honest, I'd rather have it than
not.
The Forgotten was a brutal futuristic read full of betrayal,
devastation, where a ray of hope is a luxury no one can afford, but good and
goodness does prevail.
Rating: 4/5
