This book is pretty amazing. An apocalyptic story about the beginning of the end and the end of the beginning. There is so much about Paradigm that made this enjoyable. The story was really original and the characters had such different viewpoints and strengths. This story shifts from one timeline to another, both riveting in their delivery.

This story covers the end of the world as we know it through a girl named Alice. A storm brings floods so bad civilization is forced underground. The survivors are mostly children aided by a company calledThe Industry. These children lead the way to a new way of living. They decide to start fresh and wipe out most of the things that led to the world’s demise. In the future there is Carter, a boy destined for leadership. He is unfrozen to a time 15 years into his future. He is propelled forward by being frozen in a way that has become normal. He is to be the next comptroller, a president like leader that controls the masses. The problem is that his family, both old and new, are the start of the rebellion to a society where art, music, and entertainment are prohibited. These two characters mark the beginning and the end.

What a fantastic way to start fresh! Wipe out everything that distracts from production. Alice and her generation see the err of the ways of the world. They see that the distractions take away from the things that are important. I found the character of Carter a bit less likeable, but his story was still . His reality is so rigid. He wakes up into the future. Society for him is so callous and unnatural. It is easy to see how, by avoiding somethings, a bit of humanity was wiped out. I was so captivated by the Industry. This population is made up of mostly younger people. The young and strong have found a way to survive and they are much more adaptable.

There wasn’t a bunch of technical talk in this story. We are given the elements of the community as they are known to the characters without boring explanations. This made it a much easier read than most sci-fi I have encountered. I found this book such a great escape. This was a well written story that was easy to envision. The story comes full circle in the end. There are suppose to be two more books in this series. Paradigm is so complete, I just could stop here. This book didn’t read like a series, and I am very happy to report this. Knowing and loving the characters the author has created, I am grateful there will be more. I would love to read more about this world. Bring it Ceri!

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review, thank you!

 

Paradigm is the first book in the Paradigm series.

 

The cover really looks like it's stolen from Divergent and honestly, even after the book I don't get the cover. Perhaps that the water half would refer to The Storms, but what would the fire be? Is that how they depicted invisible radiation or am I missing something?

 

Paradigm consists of two stories, one of which was really interested. It follows Alice through the destruction of London, and later after she's saved and trying to get a better life than she used to have. The apocalypse itself left me with quite some questions. Okay, The Storms seem pretty bad, but it's hard to believe that no one would make it home during them. Where did they came from? Climate change perhaps, but I won't believe that a five year long storm just came out of nowhere! How come only so few people get saved? I mean there must have been higher grounds somewhere?

 

But besides these annotations on the actual apocalypse it's an interesting story on the start of a Dystopian society. It shows early on that some people really want to do something good, while others already seem to have ulterior motives even at the beginning. Alice herself is far from perfect but interesting to read about. Why a company would build this underground world 'just in case' remains a question unanswered...

 

On the other hand there's the story of Carter. And this, unfortunately is the same old Dystopian YA all over again. He starts as the perfect dystopian person, absolutely sure he's about to rule the society (because that's a job best left to a sixteen-year-old for sure). He's arrogant and unlikeable but at least he fits into the program. But his opinions change 180 degrees in record time. (We've all read it before, haven't we?) He's a special snowflake even in a sea of special snowflakes. Perhaps needless to say, I liked this story less because it was so much less original.

 

The worldbuilding didn't make sense either at times. I never really got to understand why they froze bodies in in the first place. I'm willing to believe they froze Carter because they thought he would be more useful later when they needed a new Controller General. But why freeze other people, the one they said were not producing any more? What goal would freezing them serve?

Also, why would they thaw all possible candidates for the job at the same time? They were chosen because they had the best aptitude to solve the problems. I don't see why they shouldn't just pick the person best fit for it. Instead, just throw them into some kind of competition, that's something unheard of in Dystopian YA! </sarcasm>

I understand that in these days it's cool to call everything -omics, like genomics, but censomics just didn't make any sense...

 

The ending provided a not really surprising plot twist and enough cliffhanger to make the transgression to the second book easier. I'm torn on the series. I liked Alice's story, but at present, I'm not quite sure if it will continue in the second book. On a more positive note: It didn't (really) involve a love triangle! +1.

(I got this novel through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review. My copy being an ARC, some things in it may be different than they are in the published book.)

 

I’m not sure what to make of Paradigm. On the one hand, while its cover is terribly reminiscent of Divergent, and while it also deals with a dystopian world, it does so in a different way than what is usually seen in similar novels: the reader is actually given to see both the dystopian society and its origins, through the eyes of Carter (“present” time) and Alice (“past” time). On the other hand, I did find the story confusing in several places, and its good ideas not exploited enough.

 

What I liked:

 

* Two timelines with their own characters. I’m fond of books that make use of different timelines, because I always hope this will give me a deeper insight on what’s happening to whom, and where and when it’s happening. It opens up a lot of possibilities, and the one here—seeing what led to the “present time” dystopian state led by the Industry—is definitely interesting. The thought process involved is somewhat logical enough: “the old world failed us and we failed it, so if we are to survive, we must destroy what’s left and reinvent something new, not try to recreate our old lives.”

 

* Alice’s bleak background, and how she decided to shape a life for herself. She lost her father when she was still quite young, her mother had to sleep with men to earn money (it’s heavily implied that the forbidden room was where she would welcome customers at times, or at least, that’s how I understood it), her daily life and surroundings were far from brilliant. When the Storms hit, when she was brought underground with other survivors, she decided that she was given a chance to start all over, on equal footing with people who, before the catastrophe, had more money, weren’t bullied at school, had better prospects than her… She didn’t dwell on the misery, on the lost world, and when she did, she realised she had to come to terms with it, because it would never come back, and moping wouldn’t change anything, except set her back. The way she grew up after that, the way her mind shaped itself, was fascinating both for its positive take and for its wickedness, as contradictory as it may seem: she started from a “now I have the same chances as everyone else” approach to go through a process that would make her a perfect candidate for establishing a dystopian society.

 

* The setting. No USA this time, but London. I love London. I’m totally biased about London. And the Black River definitely lives up to its name. (Every person who’s been to/living in London must know by now that the Thames isn’t fit for diving, even now. ;))

 

* No romance, or so little (a couple of kisses, a few memories) that it didn’t really matter. Don’t misunderstand me, I can appreciate romance, but YA novels, whether dealing with dystopia or not, so often end up with stories boged down by love triangles and lovey-dovey scenes that it quickly gets old. Love wasn’t the focus here, it never was, there were so many other things to tackle first, and that’s exactly what the author did.

 

What I didn’t like:

 

* The world building started off on an intriguing footing, but some things didn’t make much sense. I would’ve liked the Storms phenomenon and its origins to be better explained—more than “we ruined our planet with pollution and now it’s too late.” Was it the same in every country? Can it only be the same everywhere? Where are the other countries, anyway (because it seems London is the only place left in the world here)? How come the Storms happened so fast? What about the government’s actions, the Army’s, the Navy’s, the police’s (it looks as if they didn’t do anything, and just died like everyone else)? Also, hurricanes by definition can’t hit Northern Europe; windstorms, sure, but not technically hurricanes. Another thing that bothered me: why were the Scouts affected by the water when they were equipped with hazmat/anti-radiation suits? From what I know, those are supposed to block particles, and I doubt whatever was in the water was tinier than alpha and beta particles—and there was heavy radiation around, since exposure was shown to lead quickly to radiation poisoning, with hair falling in clumps, bleeding, etc. If the water could affect them, then shouldn’t they have died of such poisoning pretty fast, too? (Which still happens too fast, by the way. Radiation sickness develops in 24-48 hours, not a few minutes only.)

 

Although it’s something younger readers might not pay attention to, you can never tell what they know exactly, and I think those things will clearly lead to questioning.

 

* Carter’s arc went too fast in places, and I found his character inconsistent. He started like the perfect brainwashed candidate for Mr. Dystopian World Of The Year, having worked all his (short) life to become Controller General, which is totally all right with me in such a setting… but then, he seemed to be affected too quickly by what he discovered, to be swayed and changed too drastically. His development may have been more believable to me if he had had more contact with Ariel and Lucia, with Isabella, with Iseult, and hadn’t been influenced so easily.

 

* Speaking of which, the characters in general didn’t feel very developed. I think the problem might’ve stemmed from the use of two timelines, demanding that the focus be on many things. As a result, we’d probably have needed a longer novel, in order for most of those people to be given their chance at development.

 

* A lasting feeling of confusion. It somehow worked in the beginning, in that it reflected Carter’s own confusion upon waking up, but after a while, I wasn’t sure anymore why the story jumped to this or that scene, and I always wondered if I had missed a chapter in between.

 

* The whole process of waking up people 15-20 later for them to contribute to society wasn’t too clear in its origin and goals. In a way, I can understand the desire to keep people with specific skills in cryo-sleep if they’re not absolutely needed in the now, in order to wake them up at a time when their skills are more in demand. However, why wake up a few kids and make them compete for Controller General position when they haven’t even had time to get adjusted to a world 15 years older than the one they knew? The Industry knew things had been changing, they wanted someone to right them, and I can’t decide if this made sense (keep the kids in the dark so that they compete the way they would have 15 years ago, and “bring back” ways considered as more appropriate) or not (having more data in hand could help contenders to grasp the situation and adapt their actions in order to make society the way they had known it).

 

* The writing style: overall an easy read, but sometimes I found sentences that didn’t make much sense, clauses with missing words, or descriptions that were way too vague (“There was something about him, thought Alice, that reminded her of something, but she couldn’t quite place it.”) As said, though, this was an ARC, so those problems might have been edited out of the final version.

 

I’m rating this book 1.5 stars because I really appreciated it not giving in to the pressure of “YA must have romance” and for dealing with the making of a dystopian world, not only its current existence. But it still left me frustrated on way too many accounts.

In most dystopian reads there is always this epiphany that the social situation that a character is in needs to change. Paradigm has hints of that when Carter is narrating his half of the book but it also gives you what I know I always wanted to know as reader, what happened to start the dystopian society that our character is immersed within throughout the story. Alice Davenport provides a look into the world's end and surviving what they call The Storms to develop what Carter has known his whole life. Death, struggle, change, control, regulation and doubt are all things you'd expect to find in a book like this but there are several twists you won't see coming and will keep you riveted all the way to the end.

Seeing as we have two different characters living in different time frames with two completely different POVs in regards to what is going on within their lives, I had two very different opinions on each of them. Alice I liked right away. She was a young kid that had her own quirks but you could tell she was a survivor, and she proved that when the storms killed most of the population but not her. She had this aura about her that you liked and really wanted her to succeed. Carter on the other hand struggled to capture my affection like Alice did.....at first. He came off as a cocky, arrogant teenager when we first met him. He thought he knew everything, that he was smarter than everyone and that he could do everything by himself. As the book progressed the more and more I started to like him. The less time he spent thinking he had everything figured out, the more he opened his eyes to what was going on around him and the more he started to become someone I could get behind.

Because this story is told in two different voices and far apart in a time line, it does get a little confusing. I had to re-read some of the beginning chapters to understand where we were, however I still loved that the author wanted to tell us this origin story. Of course it had a lot of themes and events that are the signature of this genre but that was okay for me because the world, the people and the situations were interesting and I wanted to learn about them. I thought they did a wonderful job of giving me a story that fit in this over-filled bubble of genre but with enough unique elements to make it refreshing. There is nothing wrong with a book that gives you what you expect in a group of stories but surprises the hell out of you along the way.

 

Originally Posted: http://thebookblogattheendoftheuniverse.blogspot.com/2014/06/review-paradigm-by-ceri-lowe.html