Promised -- Caragh M. O'Brien

Book 3 of Birthmarked trilogy

2012 Release -- Roaring Book Press

Young Adult, Dystopian, Science Fiction, Romance

So let’s get straight to the point:

The concluding book in the Birthmarked trilogy was honestly kind of unnecessary and felt out of place.

As I had already stated in a previous post, I’m not sure I understand what was actually going on in this book. Birthmarked had been a mediocre read, but it still had a good concept, a strong enough story line, well-developed characters, and enough interest to keep me hooked. It wasn’t the best book in the world, but I still enjoyed it. I went on to read Prized because I wanted to know what would happen to Gaia and how the entire dystopian aspect would be settled. But Prized turned out to be fairly disappointing: all the typical YA tropes that hadn’t been used in Birthmarked found their way into Prized and a lot of other things about the book didn’t make much sense either.

So I’d been hesitant to start reading the last book Promised without some outside motivation.

And so I stuck the darn book on two different Reading Challenges.

I had a small inkling of hope that things would turn out a bit better. Prized had to have used up the YA quotas of love polygonal angst and “speshul snowflake” main character clichés, right?

Guess not.


The Story in Brief:
So after all the too many events from Prized that I don’t really remember, the Birthmarked story line takes Gaia and her people (now that she’s a teenage leader of a large community) back to where she had started out from: the Enclave, Wharfton, the Wall that divides up the rich from the working class… the place where people outside the wall are expected to give up their babies for the honor of letting people inside the wall raise them as their own.

But Gaia was a runaway fugitive and Leon is a man despised by his own adoptive father, the Protectorat, who wouldn’t hesitate to use his own manipulations to get what he wants, even if other people have to die or suffer.

Gaia and Leon are now engaged to be married. The people of Sylum are bent on creating New Sylum with hopes for a better life. But the Protectorat of the Enclave still stands in everyone’s way.


My Thoughts:
This book was ill-executed (as had been the case with Prized).

That is the only reason I can think of as to why nothing made any sense at all and why all the characters we had sort of had respect for ended up being flimsy excuses for main characters and heroes of the people.

As I had mentioned before in my previous post, I don’t remember being so annoyed with Gaia in Birthmarked. She had been strong, resourceful, and intelligent. She had her priorities straight. She had a purpose. She wasn’t so naïve.

I remember that Birthmarked was one of the first few YA dystopians I had read back when they were first becoming popular. I was in a phase of having just finished the entire Hunger Games trilogy in one marathon read and needed to find another, similar type of story to satisfy my Bookish needs.

Having just discovered Goodreads at this same time, I started looking to the whole “similar books other readers enjoyed” recommendations options provided.

Being that a good number of YA books are written in the first person POV (which is probably my least favorite POV, but I deal with it because, BOOKS), I was happy to see that Birthmarked was written in a third person POV.

And I also found it great that Gaia wasn’t (supposedly) a typical YA heroine. She had a scar on her face, she had her personality flaws, she reacted naturally to everything that happened to her. Sure, she wasn’t the best candidate for rebellion hero for the people in this dystopian, but she had time to grow and develop, and that was what she did throughout that first book.

But then Prized came along and backtracked a lot of her growth, opting, instead, to make Gaia that special YA female lead who attracts all the men, solves all the mysteries with her limited intelligence, and becomes the savior of all the people by doing… stuff.

And now, in Promised Gaia further cements her “speshul” status by being the leader of her people who is loved by all despite the fact that she makes really bad decisions, comes up with ill-conceived strategies, can’t control her own people, and doesn’t have any foresight into the “Bigger Picture”. I mean, her plan was to get back to Wharfton and the Enclave and request assistance from the Protectorat so that she and her people could start a new little community. And it surprised me that she thought she could just waltz right back into her old home and get exactly what she wanted without any problems.

She left the Enclave as a wanted fugitive--did she really think the Protectorat would welcome her back with open arms and fulfill her every request without giving her any trouble?

What irked me the most about her was that, as the leader of New Sylum, she doesn’t act like it. She gets arrested upon arrival and still she continues to attempt “playing nice” with the Protectorat without any back-up or contingency plans. The Protectorat manipulates her in brutal ways time and again and she still believed that she could find peace with him, that his people and her people could all live together under some misguided sense of comradery. And whenever any one of her closest people came up with any plans for her to think about, she immediately shoots it down with her own twisted logic and being all, “No, this is not how we are going to run New Sylum. I know what needs to be done and I’ll thank you to stop disobeying me even though I make really bad decisions, too.”

So doesn't make her decisions based on what she feels is best for her people.  It just feels like she makes her decisions based on what she stubbornly believes to be the "right way" to settle a new community, even if it means endangering her life, her friends' lives, and the rest of the people of New Sylum's lives.  Because she makes really bad decisions.

She should be thinking about her people and what's best for them.  As the leader they look to for guidance and commands, she shouldn't be trouncing off and almost getting herself killed.  As the leader trying to establish a new community and see her people to a new and safe life worth living, she shouldn't be negotiating terms with the Protectorat while at his mercy without any fallback plans; especially after he threatens her and her people time and again.

She knows what kind of a person he is and what kind of an army he employs and knows that they wouldn't question razing her New Sylum to the ground without hesitation.  So why, oh why, was she so stubbornly set against having a fallback battle plan just in case the Protectorat decides to squash all of them rather than extend that friendly hand in peaceful alliance that he was never going to extend in the first place?

No one else in the book made sense either. Leon would go trouncing off on his own to wreak his own havoc without consulting anyone, which then caused Gaia to go after him rather than holding her place as her community’s leader and taking charge. The Protectorat and his wife would arrest or torture Gaia and then claim that she has a place with them in their baby factory as a guest, claim that she and her people are the terrorists, claim that Leon is the monster and a murderer, then turn around and arrest and torture her some more.

And, again, all this time, Gaia is still hopeful that she can come to peaceful terms with the Protectorat and get her people what they need to have.

Honestly, a rebellion against the Protectorat should have started up two books ago, and Gaia should not be the leader of that. Maybe she could be the symbol of the rebellion, but an emotional teenager who makes really bad decisions should never be the leader of any war. Especially since she keeps putting herself and everyone else into danger by acting on her own ill-conceived ideas.

But in the end, everyone still loves her and everyone still believes she’s the only one who can lead them into equal rights and freedom.

This last book felt like it was written with no direction, and that the story’s events were randomly plucked out of thin air as the author thought of them. Nothing really made any sense. I’m going to admit right now that I skim-read a good portion of the last half of Promised. At least the book was short.

***

This book is a pre-chosen participant in the following Reading Challenge(s):

• 2015 TBR Pile Challenge hosted by Roof Beam Reader
• 2015 Reading Assignment Challenge hosted by Because Reading and Fantasy is More Fun

I really don't like dropping books.  My sequence of events typically goes a little something like this:

1.  Dragging out the reading of said draggy book.

2.  Start reading other books (usually two or three others) and finishing them.

3.  Reading one or two more chapters of said draggy book to try to make some progress.

4.  Read and finishing reading more books (usually another two or three).

5.  Continue dragging out the reading of said draggy book and convincing myself that I will come back and finish it... after I've read this other, more exciting book I've been dying to read!

6.  Read one more other book that holds more appeal.

7.  Start realizing my own futility and grudgingly admit that maybe it's time to put down said draggy book.

8.  Start reading other books that sound more promising.

9.  One and a half months later, after having started reading said draggy book, put the book on an 'ON HOLD' shelf, because obviously I won't be touching it any time soon, but I have plans to come back and test my stubbornness once more, even if I have to skim read the first half of the book again.

10.  Update lists accordingly then brood about the fact that I had to put a book 'ON HOLD' for a couple hours before returning to the rest of the my reading list.

And there that book remains on an 'ON HOLD' shelf for at least six months before I finally concede to either drop it completely ("I'll probably never touch this book again, for reasons.") or stick it back on my TBR ("I'll come back and try again when I've had time to let said draggy book's events fade from my memory so I can start over from the beginning and hopefully have better luck.").  Either way, I know I haven't fully dropped the book yet and there is still hope.

Why on earth am I so stubborn about dropping books?

I chalk it up to simple stubbornness.  Or maybe the fact that, if I've put enough effort into reading approximately 50% of the book, I feel like I should just finish it.  And sometimes I look back on a lot of other books I have read to completion, knowing full well that I didn't really like them and think that I can just do the same.

I don't know what it is.  I should be able to just set a book down and walk away and not feel bad about it.  I really should.

And normally I can finish a book I'm not getting into.  But to encounter three at the same time is probably a record for me.  Maybe that's why I'm having a harder time this time around, because I'm trying too hard to finish all three of these books that I am not really getting into.  And while Promised is a fairly easy read, I'm still struggling with it rather than breezing through it and calling it done.

Why do I do this to myself?

Ani's First World Bookish Problems #11:  The desire to finish every book you start, but not knowing when (or wanting) to stop struggling with a book you're not enjoying.

(Yes, we are reiterating this First World Bookish Problem.)

Anyway...  Let's call a rant a "rant".  'Cause this is what this really is.

I'm putting An Ember in the Ashes on that dreaded 'ON HOLD' shelf, finally; however, since I got about halfway through the book, I still believe I'll be able to come back and finish it some time later.  I own it as a Kindle book, so it's not like I have to go digging for it in the future.

Because Rook is a borrowed library book, I'm going to try what I can to finish reading it.  To be honest, I'm bored with it because I'm frustrated at not understanding the setting or the story or even the characters.  But I keep getting this slight hint that SOMETHING is about to happen and it might be exciting.  Chances are that nothing is going to happen and I will have wasted my time.  But I'm crossing my fingers with some hope, because I really DO like Sophia Bellamy's character on paper, even if she's kind of dull in action.

And, for the life of me, I really don't know why I even bothered to read Promised.  I read and enjoyed Birthmarked despite it being just a mediocre dystopian read.  But at least it was a pretty good story.  Then I struggled through Prized because, "What the heck happened here?" and also, love polygon... or tetrahedron, if we want to be specific.

And I know it's been at least two years since I read Prized, because I just wasn't quite interested in finishing the series even if the idea was in the back of my head (which is why I added the darn book to two reading challenges so that I could make myself read the last book in the trilogy...), but I've found myself wondering if this series' story line has always been so confusing.  Did all the characters make sense in the previous books?  Because they don't in Promised.  Was Gaia always so emotionally immature and naive?  Did she always make really bad decisions and break at the slightest drop of a pin?

And why are we still rehashing the love tetrahedron if Gaia has already chosen her Leon as her OTP?  Can we not focus on more important life or death matters without dragging up the whole "Everyone is in love with Gaia because she's oh, so perfect in their eyes, even though she makes bad decisions based on emotions and has no sense of self-preservation or foresight to survival"?

And of course, I haven't dropped Promised yet.  It's a fairly short book and I'll be darned if I'm done in by it when I'd been able to finish other, worse books before.

In the meantime, I'm finding a new book to keep me sane.