Breathe - Flucht Nach Sequoia (2013) - Plot & Excerpts
This book series would have been a lot better if the author had done any kind of scientific research to back up the plot. SPOILERS AHEADFirst of all, the whole premise doesn't make a lot of scientific sense. I am pretty sure even the stupidest among us would consider cutting down ALL the trees a bad idea, so I don't see even a passive effort to explain, scientifically, why this was done. The book never really attempts to give the villians any kind of motive or character. They are apparently just bad people for the hell of it. The idea that they just wan't to hold onto power doesn't make much sense, because the methods they are using endangers themselves just as much as everyone else. There is no real payoff for them.The author also never bothers to explain why all the fish are dead?? Or how fringe groups are growing fruits/vegetables without any sort of pollination happening? There are a lot of plot wholes as far as the actual day to day existence of this theoretical world. There are a lot of dystopian series where they sort of explain stuff, and its kind of implausible but you can suspend your disbelief enough to let it pass, but this book fails on even the most basic levels to do that. The book is an interesting ride, and the main characters are interesting to follow. If the book had been even partially researched to add a little more flesh to the plot, it could have been really good, but as it is after you finish it you really aren't left with much more than a feeling of "well, that was pretty stupid." Its a real shame because I liked the first book and I liked the characters, but in the end everything ended up being lazily written. Can't really recommend it. At the end of Sarah Crossan's first novel in this duo I was left breathless, excited and looking forward to finding out how the tale concluded. The destruction of the 'The Grove' — another domed area where trees were now flourishing, and people were at last living away from the tyrannous Air Tax — had left me feeling shattered and sad. I was looking forward with great expectation, to reading about the Resistance as it built slowly and steadily. I was also gripped by the fact that the novel read from first person perspectives. But unfortunately those perspectives which held me in the first novel had begun to lose their grip: Bea, Jude, Quinn, Ronan, Alina — oh dear, the trouble was there were too many ‘I’-s, and I ended up becoming thoroughly confused. I thought that by this volume I would have settled down as to which ‘I’ was which, but sadly no. The ‘I’-s were too much of a muchness whereas interesting characters such as Maude, Jazz and Vanya and even the thug Maks did not get the chance to tell their own story. Added to the profusion of ‘I’-s, we have the position of all the various masks and air tanks in the story. All characters need them, even if some have been trained to breathe thinner air, but if this is the situation you’ve set up, you do need to remember which air cylinder is where, and how much oxygen is left in each. It can be done, but it makes hard work for the author and even harder work for the reader to remember where all these devices are, and how much oxygen —full half or empty— each one has. A fragile setup was created with the set-up in the first volume and it takes a lot of skill and finessing to hold this together, and hopefully strengthen it more. I was prepared to stick with it, looking forward to seeing it all gelling together, but the addition of the ticking time bomb towards the end added to the already hackneyed flavour of the narrative. Yet it was anything but exciting. And the solar respirator stinking? Dear, they stunk from the very beginning, and that would have been a good time to bring in a device to deal with it. In a word, the story didn’t work out well for this reader although I held out high hopes for it. The concept of the clunky solar respirators ease the problem a little. Still, the inquiring mind is bound to wonder how these contraptions work. They couldn't possibly of course, yet the tale might have been redeemed a bit if the author had at least gone through the motions of an explanation!
What do You think about Breathe - Flucht Nach Sequoia (2013)?
Very disappointed with the ending. I'm left with too many questions.
—zoe
loved this book, great series and very interesting, would recommend
—Shortyweaver
My only complaint is that I wish this would have been a trilogy.
—DaliaMaria
