BOOK TITLE: Opalescent
ISBN: 978-0988904934
AUTHOR: Sarah
Elle Emm
GENRE: Fiction
/ YA / Dystopian
NUMBER OF PAGES:
FORMAT: Digital
SERIES / STANDALONE: Harmony
Run #2
REVIEW BY: Dhivya
Balaji
HOW I GOT THIS BOOK: I
thank Debdatta Sahay for this review copy too.
SUMMARY:
Still enslaved in a
mixed-race zone within the United Zones of the Authority, Rain Hawkins is part
of a secret resistance preparing to take on the tyrannical President Nicks before
plans to kill the mixed zones across UZTA are executed. When unsettling dreams
and a mysterious voice begin to haunt the dark nights, Rain fears someone more
powerful than she has discovered the resistance and their secret abilities.
With a known Authority spy on her heels, and her boyfriend, Jabari, suddenly
acting strange, Rain doesn't know who to trust and if the voices calling to her
are friend or foe. As conditions across all of the zones get worse and the
stakes rise, Rain embarks on a quest for answers that will put the people she
cares about most in more danger or take them one step closer to the truth and
their eventual freedom.
REVIEW:
Prismatic, book one of this series,
was well written and true to its genre. It did not disappoint me and of course
for someone who had been stuck with reading too many dystopian novels at a
stretch, the plot seemed to be developed from hints of the same mould. Teenager
rebellion group plotting against the establishment and all this happening in
the near future, making this a part science fiction novel. Never having been a
YA fanatic, Prismatic, though good in writing, didn’t exactly offer anything
exhilarating.
Opalescent on the other hand,
impressed me. There is no other word for it. Yes there were faults; yes there
were other limitations too. But after reading the first book of the series, I had
expected the story to go in one direction but this one went in a different one.
It is still predictable in some cases, but with many more interesting twists.
The story is milky iridescence – like
the description. This book is the overload of information and too many
character and behaviour twists. Nearly hundred pages longer than its
predecessor, this book contains a lot more information. Rain Hawkins is still
going strong. The first chapter shocked me (though it is expected, the writing
style still tugged at some strings) and it is then I decided that I was
beginning to like this series.
Rain has premonitions and this adds to
her already growing burden of being oppressed. From burning books to erasing
history, the oppressors do everything to bring total control over the masses.
They do not stop with renaming streets, they proceed to even rename people with
numbers. Unlike the previous one, this book ends with a very ominous note. I
had begun to like Rain more in this book, and also loved the detailing, even if
it all still sounds very familiar. This one made me rush to open the next book
in the series.
WHAT I LIKED: The
detailing. The story developing into the whole premonition paranormal thing.
WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN BETTER: The
story was a bit long and sometimes dragged, but the overall effect was good.
VERDICT: Still
the stereotypical lemonade – but this time with a dash of vodka!
RATING: 4/5
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Sarah
Elle Emm is the author of the HARMONY RUN SERIES, a young-adult fantasy and
dystopian series, released in May 2012 by Winter Goose Publishing. (PRISMATIC,
May 2012, OPALESCENT, February 2013, CHATOYANT, September 2014, NACREOUS,
August 2015) Her debut fiction novel, MARRYING MISSY, was published by Bird
Brain Publishing in October 2011. Sarah is a graduate of The University of
Evansville, she has lived and worked in Mexico, Germany, England, the U.S.
Virgin Islands, and has traveled extensively beyond. Sarah lives in Naples,
Florida with her family. When she’s not walking the plank of her daughters’
imaginary pirate ship or snapping photos of Southwest Florida scenery, she is
writing.
EDITIONS AVAILABLE: Paperback,
Digital
PRICE: $1.98 for Kindle, $14.75
for Paperback
