Book Review: Under the Never Sky by Veronica Rossi

Under the Never Sky by Veronica Rossi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Publication date: January 2012
Pages: 384
Source: ARC provided by publisher
For: Review
Series: Under the Never Sky, Book 1

When Aria finds herself thrown from her safely enclosed city, she is terrified of what she'll find in the Outside.  Things are nearly as bad as she pictured, with aether storms, wild animals, and the savage people who live on the outside.  But she must trust herself to one of those savages, Perry, if she is to get back to her home again.  And Perry must travel with Aria, despite his disgust for her soft Dweller ways, in order to save someone he loves.  Will the two survive the Outside, and each other?

Things I Liked:
I enjoyed the compelling ideas about our future this book portrayed, especially the way people spend most of their time living in virtual reality (which, honestly, is an idea I've had for a book for quite some time, so maybe I'm biased a bit).  I liked watching Aria experience life on the outside, in the real world, and the very real differences between Aria and Perry. Those differences didn't change, which allowed the characters themselves to change their perspectives.  I loved how their relationship developed - how it was slow and steady and had setbacks and wasn't instant or eternal.  No love triangle, just real obstacles.  And what kept me reading was that I had no idea where the story was going.  The ending and a lot of the lead up were not predictable (at least to me).  It was unique, well-crafted, smart and complex. No huge cliffhanger, but some interesting plot points for a sequel.  All around, it's an impressive dystopian debut that avoids some of the tropes of its genre.

Things I Didn't Like:
There were some things about the future tech and explanations for how the world ended up that way that didn't entirely satisfy me.  The world building felt a bit cursory or shallow.  Essentially, I wanted more!  Hopefully more about the Aether and the technology will be coming in the sequels.

Read-alikes:
Uglies by Scott Westerfeld
Matched and Crossed by Ally Condie

BOOK CONTENT RATINGS:
s-factor: !@
not too many, but some

mrg-factor: XX
not on page, but implied

v-factor: ->-> 
definitely some action, a bit gory at times

Overall rating: **** 

What does your idea of the future look like?

Looking for more dystopian goodness?  Be sure to stop at Presenting Lenore's Dystopian February celebration.

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