BOOK REVIEW - BIRTHMARKED by CARAGH O'BRIEN - BIRTHMARKED SERIES # 1

By: Caragh O'Brien
Published By : Simon and Schuster
Released : Available Now
Details : Paperback, 361 Pages ( Given for review by Simon and Schuster)

RATING : 4.5 LEON STARS!!!

Book Blurb : Taken From Goodreads

After climate change, on the north shore of Unlake Superior, a dystopian world is divided between those who live inside the wall, and those, like sixteen-year-old midwife Gaia Stone, who live outside. It’s Gaia’s job to “advance” a quota of infants from poverty into the walled Enclave, until the night one agonized mother objects, and Gaia’s parents are arrested.  

Badly scarred since childhood, Gaia is a strong, resourceful loner who begins to question her society. As Gaia’s efforts to save her parents take her within the wall, she herself is arrested and imprisoned.
Fraught with difficult moral choices and rich with intricate layers of codes, Birthmarked explores a colorful, cruel, eerily familiar world where one girl can make all the difference, and a real hero makes her own moral code.
 

BOOK REVIEW:


A big thankyou to Simon & Schuster for sending ‘Birthmarked’, to me for review. I love dystopian genre and this book did not hesitate to please me. ‘Birthmarked’ is a genuine page turner.


Gaia Stone is one determined, tough young girl. At only 16 she had me holding my breath with her fierceness, she is a midwife, parentless and determined to tough it out by herself until she realises that her parents need her.


Where there is a will, there is a way and Gaia will stop at nothing to discover the truth about her parents. She is incredibly selfless and brave for her age.


Being a mother of 3 kidlets, I can’t fathom having to give birth under those conditions and then have to agree to have my baby taken from me and delivered to the guards at The Enclave within 90 minutes from the babes birth.


Rather a frightening society that allows these poor , kind people to live outside the walls of The Enclave, left to fend for themselves, with a little help/payment/compensation for receiving the first 3 babies of the month.


The allure of life inside The Enclave is not all it seems. Who actually are the lucky ones, the people of Wharfton , who live with little outside the walls of The Enclave or the well looked after people within the walls ?


Sgt Grey..soon to be Captain Leon Grey is intriguing at first . What is his deal?


I was quite surprised that within the walls there were computers, telephones, electricity, I don’t know why ..considering it’s into the year 2400.


Within the walls is a mixture of ye olden times with hangings/executions and computers and phones. It is the world that Caragh has built for the reader.


I am rather intrigued by Danni O...... there’s another story there , I think ‘Prized ‘, book #2 will unfold that story.


The Tvaltar, is it like a big tv screen that they can view, hence the name Tv...altar? Those precious tickets that allow them to see into The Enclave way of life, it felt like they were waving their so called good life in front of the people of Wharfton’s faces. “Hey come earn a ticket to come see us, but you can’t be us”.


Mabrother Iris, oooo, I could wringe his neck, he is a creep and needs to be dispatched of.


Families of Wharfton are being torn apart by a society that is dying, does everyone within the walls agree with The Enclave and it’s rules? Is there a rebellion underfoot?


I’m looking forward to ‘Prized’, due for release 8th November 2011. Caragh has me intrigued to know more about Leon Grey , will he be a part of ‘Prized’, I do hope so:D

Caragh has built a world where love is tested, punished, left to die, but most of all it is worth fighting for.

Michelle