Review: The Young World

The Young World
Author: Chris Weitz
Publication Date: July 29th 2014         
Publisher: Atom 
~A copy was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review~

 Welcome to New York, a city ruled by teens. After a mysterious Sickness wipes out the rest of the population, the young survivors assemble into tightly run tribes. Jefferson, the reluctant leader of the Washington Square tribe, and Donna, the girl he's secretly in love with, have carved out a precarious existence among the chaos. But when another tribe member discovers a clue that may hold the cure to the Sickness, five teens set out on a life-altering road trip to save humankind. The tribe exchanges gunfire with enemy gangs, escapes cults and militias, braves the wilds of the subway and Central Park ...and discovers truths they could never have imagined.

I have mixed feelings about The Young World, for a few reasons, on one hand it's fun and full of action, but on the other...the pacing was a little off for me. Then there's the characters, on one hand I liked them eventually, but on the other hand, they were hard to get used to... but I'll get to that in a minute.

It took me a while to get into The Young World, the first 100 pages were a little slow and up until one scene I was really struggling. There's this library scene that I won't tell you about, but it's one of those scenes that you read, stop, then reread to double check, and then reread again to make sure because it's what-the-hell-did-I-just-read scene. One I'll also advise you- as I do with Bones- don't eat while you're reading that library scene because it will turn you off what you're eating. Or make you sick. Yeah. That's where The Young World get's interesting though because it's something you never expected- and one you should have really scene coming, considering the state of the world and population, but it's shocking. There's a lot of action from there on out, fighting, blood, guns, things blowing up, yes.

When a world suddenly has no government, no adults, brings no rules, no restrictions, no constitution, no economy and no civilisation,  So the teens that are left form tribes and groups, and while some like to live peacefully and just get on with things as best as they can, there are others who are trying to take over. We have multiple groups like that in The Young World, the worst being The Uptowners who want and have control over everything, and they use what they can to extort people, prostitutes, rape, murder, kidnapping. That side of the world is brutal. But the tribe our characters are  peaceful, but they do what they have to do if they're forced to it, or threatened. Which, they continue to show throughout the story and journey.

Now, I mentioned the characters were an issue for me, The Young World's written in first person, with dual narratives from our two main characters, Jefferson and Donna, it wasn't hard to distinguish between the two, Male/Female aside, Jefferson more...stoic, and Donna, well, Donna has issues. The problem for me mainly, was Donna, she hits you with a huge personality, and a take-it-or-leave-it attitude, which isn't necessarily a bad thing,  but was a bit full on since you literally just "met" her. That's  the problem, we didn't really get to know her, because she had that big personality from the beginning, before you even get to know her. Therefore she was a little hard to actually get to know and to read from, but she got better later on, and she grows on you.

I didn't ship any of the romance, more because it didn't feel like romance and more of an additional thing. We do have a little triangle, but not really, it's hard to explain because of the situation but it's not really a love triangle. The "I-love-you's" were waaaay too quick, and I know the worlds dangerous and you get instalove going on and all that, and okay, the characters have known each other for a long time, but I just didn't get that feeling. We're told, and shown with bits and pieces of memories before What Happened, but I never got the chemistry between them. So, I'm hoping we'll get more of that in the next installment.

Overall, The Young World is a fun action packed journey that's on the survivor side as teens fight for information about a cure to the virus. It's shocking and surprisingly real in some places where it comes to what people can do to each other for power.

 

Rating: 4/5