Review : The Unidentified

Posted by kay on February 7, 2011 12:58 am in 4 stars reads | 5 comments

The Unidentified by Rae Mariz
Pages : 296
Genre : YA, Dystopia
Stand Alone
My Rating :

What it’s about :

Kid’s school is called the Game : the teenagers play through levels in what used to be a mall, while being observed through cameras by sponsors. Everyone’s dream is to be sponsored – or more exactly, branded – , yet Kid has a hard time finding her own way through the different groups populating her school.

Then a group called the Unidentified pulls a surprising prank, and Kid just can’t let it go : she has to know who they are, and why they pulled such a stunt. Because of her interest in the case, Kid is suddenly of interest to the sponsors and becomes part of the popular crowd. All Kid has to do now, is figure out what she really wants.

The Unidentified made the top of my list in 2010 because I enjoyed it so much : it felt new, a dystopia different from the apocalyptic kind I mostly read. I loved how the author gave a general yet precise description of the environment, giving place for my imagination to fill the blanks. I was surprised by how captivated I was by this book, of which I had heard very few but very good things!

The book isn’t focussed on action, yet there is always something happening making you turn the page. It suits the story really, since networks in the like of Twitter and Facebook are all the rage and may change someone’s life in a second (sounds familiar?) The presence of social medias makes it easy to relate to the characters and the life they live, but introduces enough new elements to keep it fresh. It’s a small touch, but I loved how the author named the products, too!

As a character, Kid was really enjoyable. She was a balanced kid, who could fall in love yet question other people’s motivations, desired to belong yet wasn’t sure she wanted to be branded. She questions and has humor, without being the constantly-ironic-teenager we often meet in books and movies. I felt like her friends came alive through the page, too.

I really loved the book and secretly wished, as I was reading it, that it could be longer – or that the author would write a sequel. This came from my enjoyment of the story, but also from what I found to be missing in this novel : a better description of the world surrounding the Game, and how the Game came to be. Though I can fill-in the blanks with my own imagination, it wasn’t clear to me, what had lead things to come this way, what was so bad about the outside world, and so on. It didn’t keep me from enjoying the book though! 🙂