Monday, December 30, 2013

ARC Review: Enders by Lissa Price

* This review may contain spoilers for the previous book, Starters. *

Enders by Lissa Price
Enders (Starters #2)
By Lissa Price
Publisher:
Delacorte Press
Format: eBook
Source: Author’s Publicist/NetGalley
Publication Date: January 7, 2014

To Sum It Up: Callie Woodland may have helped shut down Prime Destinations, the creepy business operation that allowed elderly Enders to relive their youth by renting the bodies of young Starters who desperately needed the money, but Prime’s mastermind, the Old Man, is still after Callie. Not only can he speak to her via the chip still implanted in her head, but he also won’t hesitate to hurt those she cares about to get to her. Callie’s chip is unique, and the Old Man has plans for it. With her nemesis closing in on her fast, Callie races to find a way to stop him.

Review: With its creeptastic plot centered around teens renting out their bodies to the elderly so the latter could experience being young all over again, Starters was quite a novel read for me. Factor in its protagonist, Callie, unexpectedly regaining consciousness during the time an Ender was supposed to be inhabiting her body, and the book was all the more intriguing to read. Starters concluded with Callie watching the demolition of Prime Destinations, the body rental bank founded by the shadowy figure known only as the Old Man, who can still communicate directly with Callie through her chip implant. And so Enders begins with the Old Man as determined as ever to find Callie.

Whereas Starters grabbed me from the outset because of how different the premise was compared to other dystopians I'd read, I thought the plot of Enders took a little while to get moving. To me, it didn’t have quite the same sense of urgency that Starters did, where Callie woke up during the rental and was going to assassinate a senator if she didn’t thwart her renter, Helena, in time. It’s not that Enders is short on action; there’s more than an adequate supply of it, some of it literally explosive. But the shift of focus to Callie and her companions trying to aid their fellow Metals, other Starters who were body donors for Prime, while staying one step ahead of the Old Man just didn’t carry the same oomph for me as Callie’s experiences in the first book did.

Initially I was surprised that a character who featured prominently in Starters barely figured into the story here. That gets explained toward the end of the book, though, and I thought it was a very clever twist. We’re also introduced to a new character named Hyden, who proves to be a technical genius. His trustworthiness is another question, however, and one of the highlights of the book was trying to figure him out.

Once again, Callie is a steady heroine with a solid head on her shoulders. She’ll do anything to protect her younger brother, Tyler, and she doesn’t want to see any harm come to her fellow Metals, who are also being targeted by the Old Man. He’s just as diabolical in Enders as he was in Starters; every time he talks to Callie in her mind, it’s absolutely chilling.

Although I enjoyed reading Starters just a tad more, Enders is still a solid follow-up with some eye-opening twists of its own. Lissa Price excels at catching you off guard, and I look forward to many more of those moments in her future works.

All in All: If you liked Starters, you should find Enders to be a satisfying sequel and conclusion to Callie’s story.

2 comments:

  1. I read starters and ummed/ahhed about whether or not to read the sequell. Great review!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think Starters was a little more fast-paced, but Enders had some really unexpected twists. I hope you decide to read it- I'd love to hear what you think of it!

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