Book Review: The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken

The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken
Series: #1 in the The Darkest Minds series
Release Date: December 18, 2012
Publisher: Disney Hyperion
Pages: 496
Received: ARC from Ruby!
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Goodreads Page

Summary

From me, because the book blurb tells you the entire story:

Horrible disease of unknown everything spreads and kills kids when they reach, surprise surprise, puberty! Those who managed to survive end up developing superpowers. YAY! But they're rounded up and sent to concentration camps where they're sorted into color groups based on the nature of their powers. Less yay.

Ruby, our wishy-washy heroine, is really a majorly dangerous Orange (mind control!) but she has a rare moment of decisive intelligence and uses her power to make her captors think she's a benign Green (codebreaker extraordinaire). When they start to catch on to her deception, she manages to escape with the help of a shady group of rebels!

Soon after, she meets up with a stereotypical but lovable group of motley runaways, including The Smart One, The Cute Shy Kid, and The Hot One. Thus begins a periodically slow but also occasionally rollicking quest to find the Slip Kid, the rumored leader of a superpower utopia who can help them find their families.

Review

Why isn't this the sequel to Brightly Woven?

Ok, I'll admit, right off the bat I was disappointed with The Darkest Minds. And this is totally unfair of me, because I hadn't even possessed a copy of the book yet, let alone read a single word in it.

It's just, I loved Brightly Woven, Alexandra Bracken's first book, so darn much and I've had a hard time accepting the fact that she wrote another book and it 1) isn't a sequel and 2) isn't even a high fantasy.

It's a dystopia, and we all know I have a rocky relationship with that genre.

But, it's Alexandra Bracken! So I was cautious, but my hopes were still pretty darn high. 

So, what kind of dystopia is this anyway?

Not the great kind. But not the bad kind either. It's kind of a middling dystopia with an interesting premise that miraculously focuses neither on romance nor that excruciating, slow, and totally stupid "slow awakening" that takes hundreds of pages to basically say, "duh, this world sucks." So, yay!

Ruby knows from the get-go that her world is messed up (hey, she grew up in a concentration camp). This journey is faster paced than most Book 1 dystopias since Ruby spends the majority of it running away from various bad people out to either harm her or use her for her powers.

The only downside is, despite her awesome superpower, she doesn't actually do a whole lot of fighting back. And the few times she does? It's straight to the fetal position of shock and shame for our hero. So don't expect Buffy.

The good

Alexandra Bracken's world is also sort of a dystopia/post-apocalyptic cross, which upped its awesome points because I love post-apoc stories.

There's a government that sends its children to concentration camps and kills A TON of people because they're super duper evil like that. And, really, let me stress A TON. Dead. This evil government is actually hardcore evil with a body count to match the dystopia genre tag. Bracken's not playing around here.

On top of that, most of the population was convinced that this move was the right thing to do, and the fact that they felt this way actually made sense (unlike some YA dystopias). At this point I was so happy to have a dystopia grounded in plausible reality that I was almost ready to forgive Alexandra Bracken for not spending her every writing moment penning me more Wayland North scenes. Almost.

Even better, most of the book follows main character Ruby (concentration camp escapee) and her rag-tag group of similarly superpowered youths as they travel across the country trying to survive in the post-apocalyptic land while being pursued by multiple groups of baddies all out to get them.

Did you get all that? Here, let me break down the awesome for you:

1) Kids with superpowers! Have I mentioned how much I love this plot point? The superpowers in The Darkest Minds were a little more joy-suck ala Rogue-can't-touch-people-without-killing-them and a little less wish-fulfillment than I'd like, but superpowers are still superpowers and you can never go too wrong by adding them to any plot.

2) Road trip! Another plot point that automatically elevates a storyline. There's even a sort of quest to find a mythical utopia for superpowered kids that can only be located by first finding and then cracking a code, which is pretty much another sentence packed with win right there.

Though I could have done with a cooler road trip vehicle than a minivan. For crying out loud.

Seriously YA authors, what gives? First we get Edward's decidedly uncool "Safety First" Volvo, and now this?! Have you not seen The Omega Man? Mad Max? If I ever find myself cruising around in a post-apocalyptic land, you'd better believe I'll be driving in V8-muscle style.

3) Pursuit. Always gets the heart racing.

4) Multiple groups of baddies. It would have been fine if Alexandra Bracken had created a bad government and left it at that. But multiple groups? That makes A LOT more sense. This world is fractured, so it's totally logical that there would be more than one group with an agenda running around. It could have been SO easy for Alexandra Bracken to have divided her lines across stark good and bad, government versus anti-government and called it a day.

But she didn't, and I love her for it. The development of different groups with their sometimes aligned and sometimes at odds agendas make perfect sense and kept both Ruby and myself on our toes. Who can we trust? Anyone? No one? I'm still not sure where to put my loyalties, if anywhere, but I know I want to find out more about all of them.

And one final good

Chubs. Ah, I love this guy. He's part of Ruby's group of runaways and while he spends a good part of the book annoyed with her, he's a total genius and a softie and I love him.

Fortunately, he's not Ruby's love interest. I know, totally weird thing for me to say, right? But it's true.

He's a great guy and he has great chemistry with Ruby whether they're fighting or friendly, but it's purely on a friend level. And that's where I want it to stay. It's like Anne and Diana or Kirk and Spock (and while some fan fictions might go there, that's just wrong). Their friendships are perfection and I love that an author actually focused on developing a meaningful friendship instead of romance.

But that cliffhanger of an ending? All I'm going to say is that IT BETTER GO MY WAY. 

*cough* and the bad

You knew this wasn't going to be all yays and points. There is a whole star and a half missing here, and unfortunately I have more than a few reasons why.

First off, I read an ARC, and oh lord do I hope the finished version has had a lot more work done to it. Plot holes! Incoherent superpowers! Wandering plot! Shoddy world-building!

A lot of The Darkest Minds was just a hot mess. It felt like a rush-job that was put out there before it was ready. I feel like it makes so much more sense in the author's mind and it's really totally developed and even intricate...but only about 70% made it to paper. I want to read the 100% version, because that would be awesome.

Add to that the flat characters, survival stupidity, and pity party main character, I'm sometimes surprised by how much I actually did like this book.

The ideas were good, and I think I ran with that, even while part of me was sitting there thinking, "wait, what? NO, this is only half-baked!"

And Ruby. Boy, did I want to like her. Sadly, she commits two of my biggest MC pet-peeves. First, she spends the entire (long) book moping in timid indecision, internally whining over how everyone will hate her if they find out the truth about her. Honey, *I* was starting to hate you, and it had nothing to do with your superpower. 

Which leads me to grievous MC sin number two: Superpower squandering. Ruby would rather take the LALAALALA-I'M-NOT-LISTENING approach to her powers instead of actually, you know, using them. I don't read a book about people with superpowers so I can listen to them cry about how woe-is-me they are for having them and ignore their power because it is oh so scary.

Please.

Now, fine, Alexandra Bracken at least gives Ruby a pretty legit reason to be afraid of her powers and it did totally tug at my heartstrings and even make me tear up a little, but I really don't care. Superpower squandering is unforgivable.

Ok, let's get down to what's important here

Romance.

While I'm not sure if this is entirely fair on my part, I have to admit I was disappointed. To be frank, I was gunning for Wayland North Does Post-Apocalyptic Dystopia, and I know that's slightly unrealistic.

I mean, wouldn't it be a source of complaint if Alexandra Bracken basically took the same Brightly Woven characters, gave them modern clothes, and called it a day? Wouldn't that be considered lazy? Uncreative? Yeah, probably. But that's what I wanted. Because I'm still pining for Wayland North.

And Liam? He's no Wayland North.

Liam is nice. In real life, I'd probably love him. He makes a good mental picture, has a hot Southern accent, and he's a total gentleman.

He's also super boring. Where was the swagger? The charm? The, I don't know, personality? Basically, I wanted Han Solo and instead I got Luke Skywalker (though hotter, there's that).

And the other guy? (Yeah, we take an annoying detour down that path). All I can say is UGH BARF NO. From the very beginning.

I don't know if I like being emotionally manipulated like that

There were a few gut-punches thrown in there and I'm still not sure how I feel about them. On one hand, they totally worked. I was crying and mentally screaming, "NO NO NO THAT CAN'T HAPPEN STOP NOW!!" which is a definite mark in the win column.

But, eeeeh, did we need to resort to emotional manipulations? Or, maybe I would have liked them more if the rest of the book felt as raw and spectacular as those scenes. As it was, it felt like I was snoozing through a fog of emotional detachment because, while they were nice enough, I really couldn't have cared less about the characters (Chubs excepted).

And then, BAM suddenly I did!

Or did I? Did I care about them, or was their plight just so emotionally transcendent that I'd have to be darn near inhuman not to feel for them (whoever the heck they are)? I think it's the latter. The events made me think how heartbroken I would feel if *I* were the one going through them, or even just how devastating they were conceptually. But they didn't make me feel for Ruby.

So even while I was reeling from all the emotions and loving the fact that Alexandra Bracken went there and that was awesome and amazing and took The Darkest Minds to that great IMPACT level most YA dystopias lack, it still feels kinda like a cheap shot.

Bottom line

The Darkest Minds is not the book I was hoping it would be. Part of that is my own fault for wanting to make it into something it wasn't (and stubbornly refusing to accept it for what it was).

But even accounting for that, this one seems like it needed to spend more time in development. A little more editing, (A LOT) more coherent world-building, and a MC who isn't so wishy-washy would have gone a long way to making The Darkest Minds one of the rare really good YA dystopias.

But, whatever. It falls short. That's ok. It's still an absorbing read that will likely appeal strongly to dystopia fans. Definitely something I'll be ordering for my library teens (probably too hardcore for tweens...unless they're already reading The Hunger Games), even if it isn't something I'll keep in my own personal library (so, trade?).

Will I read the sequel? Maybe, maybe not. I still haven't decided.  

Also, cliffhanger warning. Total cliffhanger. 



On an unrelated note, I wish they had kept the original title Black is the Color. It's so fresh and original and striking. The Darkest Minds is so bland, been-there-done-that, and lame. Plus, it never fails to make me think of Michelle Pfeiffer bringing the joy of education to dangerous, misunderstood youths. 

Explanation of rating system: Star Rating Key 

Do you have any questions about The Darkest Minds that I haven't addressed? 
Feel free to ask in the comments!

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