Thursday, July 17, 2014

Book Review: Luminary

Luminary. Krista McGee. 2014. Thomas Nelson. 311 pages. [Source: Library]

Luminary is the sequel to Anomaly, a lovely little dystopian novel I read and reviewed last summer. The third novel, Revolutionary, was just released. Luminary is very much the middle book, for better or worse. While I can definitely keep spoilers for this book out of this review, I can't promise that there won't be spoilers for the first book, Anomaly.

Luminary opens with Thalli and three of her friends escaping State. John is the father of one of the Scientists. He is the one whose ideas are deemed to dangerous to allow him access to the rest of the underground community. He believes in a Designer. Berk is Thalli's love interest. He's smart and brave too; he was on his way to becoming a scientist. He isn't just a love interest. Rhen, I wish I could say that she plays an actual part in this one. But she doesn't. She really doesn't. Thalli sees Berk and Rhen talking and assumes that they are falling in love behind her back. And that's it. Thalli sees her as a potential threat and starts treating her accordingly…at least in her private thought life. These four are escaping State, but, their get-away is a little too easy.

So Luminary is about two survivor settlements that they discover. One is New Hope. The other is Athens. Readers spend time learning about the two very different settlements. New characters are introduced. Almost all of the new characters play a bigger role than poor Rhen! One of the main characters we spend time with is a young man named Alex. He is prince of Athens.

Luminary is about community and government. When the incident happened, when nuclear war happened, those that survived tended to have definite opinions on how to rebuild. Readers will see three different perspectives on rebuilding.

If Luminary has a weakness as a novel, it is that it has no real ending! It is one of those frustrating books that just stops.

© Becky Laney of Operation Actually Read Bible

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