Larry Iiams

***************SPOILERS************** I struggled between giving this two or three stars. Overall, I loved the series. Neal Shusterman is a great author and as a huge fan of dystopian books, I greatly enjoyed his take on the possibilities of a utopia turned dystopia. However, I found the finale to be rather unfulfilling. I am happy to use my imagination to conjure up what may have become of the characters I came to love like Citra, Rowan, Jeri and Greyson. And while I feel the ending does give the reader a pretty fine idea of what may happen for them, I find there to be too many loose ends. I also find some of the characters endings to just be plain boring and lazy. Having Goddard be a titular antagonist for the entire series just to have him be killed by Ayn in a passing thought was absurd. I felt robbed of a truly satisfying ending to his story. Lastly, I absolutely adored Jeri, but I feel as though Jeri was introduced to the series for the wrong reasons. I wholeheartedly support the introduction of Queer characters into all forms of media, but only if it makes sense to the story. Jeri is a wonderful, powerful and important character both with regard to and regardless of their fluidity. I found the constant reassertion of Jeri’s non-binary identity to be nothing more than what has been termed “Queer-Baiting” and frankly it was rather disrespectful, in my opinion. Introducing, and constantly reasserting a fluid character, during this current social climate we are in is not something I feel was a coincidence. All that said, the series is amazing and I plan to read more of Shusterman’s books as I think his storytelling and writing style is one of the best I’ve encountered in recent years.