It's Monday! What Are You Reading? Book Review: Inhuman

Title: Inhuman (Book 1 in the Fetch series)

Author: Kat Falls

Publication Date: September 24, 2013

Publisher: Scholastic

Genre: Fantasy, dystopian

Pages: 384

Age Rating: Readers over 13

My Opinion: 5/10

Hi, Readers!

       For this It's Monday! What Are You Reading?, hosted by Teach Mentor Texts, Book Journeys, and Unleashing Readers, I chose to review a book that you should not read.  I used to think that a book would be "good" because it has an interesting concept, but reading Inhuman, by Kat Falls, has shown me that writing style and characters are much more important.  Inhuman has a creative plot line, but that is its only saving grace. 

       Lane McEvoy lives peacefully on the safe side of an enormous wall that seperates civilization from the Feral Zone, filled with savagery and disease, and she has no interest in discovering why the wall was built in the first place.  However, when her father is discovered as a known criminal who has crossed the wall numerous times and survived, Lane is forced to take drastic action in order to clear her father's name.  She has to enter the Feral Zone in order to find her father,getting help from friends such as a thief, Rafe, and a soldier, Everson.  However, Lane is forced to confront the truth about what is actually in the Feral Zone, and her discoveries sure aren't pretty.

A standout quote from Inhuman

       When I started reading the book, I immediately became confused.  Lane was hanging out with friends that I figured would be other main characters, but then they completely disappear from the book after a couple of chapters.  Then, as soon as Lane crosses into the Feral Zone, she starts remembering these weird childhood stories that her father used to tell her, and the stories miraculously help her to survive.  It seems to me that Kat Falls threw the stories in as an afterthought, and they do not seem coherent.  Later, the author introduced these completely unexpected mutated humans that have somehow mixed their DNA with that of animals... The book's story line is very choppy and hard to follow until about halfway through.

       Frankly, the characters were not very pleasing, either.  Lane seems weak and she gets captured by the antagonist a number of times.  On top of that, she has to wait for Rafe and Everson to save her every time she is captured. Plus, Everson and Rafe are extremely stereotypical - the upstanding citizen-soldier and the bad boy thief.  Yawn.  On the other hand, the novel's antagonist, a human-tiger mutant named Chorda, is quite freaky and pops up in the most random of settings.

       Inhuman does have one thing going for it - Kat Falls is not afraid to take drastic measures such as killing off characters.  Most authors hesitate to kill off main characters so that readers are not upset, but I was pleased that Falls took the risk because it increased the suspense throughout the novel.  Also, I am happy with the ending of the book because, although it is the first in a series, almost all of the plot elements were wrapped up nicely.  

       

       To put it simply, Inhuman is not a book that you should spend your time reading unless you read as much as I do.  It was very choppy and incoherent, and the characters were obnoxious.  I'm actually disappointed that Inhuman wasn't well written because I've enjoyed other Kat Falls novels.  I did enjoy the story as a whole, but not enough to recommend Inhuman as more than a 5/10.  Needless to say, I will not be anxiously awaiting its sequel.

Happy reading and have a great Monday!