Review: Burning Kingdoms by Lauren DeStefano

Title: Burning Kingdoms (The Internment Chronicles #2)
Author: Lauren DeStefano
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Release date: March 10th 2015
Source: Edelweiss
Format: eARC

Rating: 2.5/5

Buy on: Amazon | B&N | BookDepository

You can read my review of Perfect Ruin - here

Danger descends in the second book of The Internment Chronicles, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Chemical Garden trilogy.

After escaping Internment, Morgan and her fellow fugitives land on the ground to finally learn about the world beneath their floating island home.

The ground is a strange place where water falls from the sky as snow, and people watch moving pictures and visit speakeasies. A place where families can have as many children as they want, their dead are buried in vast gardens of bodies, and Internment is the feature of an amusement park.

It is also a land at war.

Everyone who fled Internment had their own reasons to escape their corrupt haven, but now they’re caught under the watchful eye of another king who wants to dominate his world. They may have made it to the ground, but have they dragged Internment with them?

I liked Perfect Ruin and I was eager to read its sequel, as the previous book had ended with a cliffhanger, which had left me hooked and wanted to know what had happened to Morgan and the people that fled with her. But the truth is that Burning Kingdoms bored me, mainly due to the extremely slow pace and rather anti-climactic plot.

Besides the main character irritated me, because in the first book she spends her time dreaming of the world below (since she lived in a city floating in the sky) and as soon she fulfilled hers mission and escape Internment and reach the below (aka earth), a land at war, she spends her time missing her floating city.

The plot leaves much to be desired, since despite being 320 pages, not much happens of relevance and it sort of lost the magic that had the first book - I liked the idea of a floating city - because this book takes place an alternate world that reminds me a lot of earth in the 20's, as we see silent films and other details that reminded me of that time.

Overall, I didn´t enjoyed Burning Kingdoms as much as its predecessor, it definitely suffered from second book syndrome, in truth I was very disappointed because the plot was lacking.

Review: Perfect Ruin by Lauren DeStefano

Title: Perfect Ruin (The Internment Chronicles #1)
Author: Lauren DeStefano
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Release date: October 1st 2013

Rating: 3.5/5

Buy on: Amazon | B&N | BookDepository

On the floating city of Internment, you can be anything you dream, unless you approach the edge. Morgan Stockhour knows getting too close can lead to madness, like her older brother Lex, a Jumper. She takes solace in her best friend Pen, and in Basil, the boy she’s engaged to marry. When she investigates the first murder in a generation, she meets Judas. The suspect was betrothed to the victim, but Morgan believes he is innocent. Nothing can prepare Morgan for the secrets she will find – or whom she will lose.

Perfect Ruin is another dystopian book (I still don´t get tired of them) and takes place on Internment, a city floating in the sky, where citizens live the "perfect" life, because there anyone can study or work in what they want, the births and departures (deaths) are controlled by the government, people are engaged from birth and everyone is free to do whatever they want as long as they stay away from the edge of town which for some reason incapacitates those who approach it and the persons that approach the edge are called Jumpers.

Morgan is a young woman who dreams of the world below, but because his brother Lex is a jumper and due his experience, she tries to keep to a minimum her curiosity about the unknown and tries to settle for life in city of Internment and accept her life, which to some extent she´s happy with her family, her best friend Pen and her fiance Basil, that is until a classmate is found dead, which is the first violent act that her generation has faced.

This murder creates panic among residents of the quiet city of Internment and when is suspected that the murder is Judas, the victim´s betrothed, something that Morgan is not so sure, she doesn´t believe him to be guilty, so she slowly begins to discover that her idyllic world, it is not really perfect.

Internment is a mixture of old and new, as there are some technology, because they have a train around the city and it can be seen other type technology in the city, but at least for me, it feels like it takes place in the first half of the last century, it gave me that idea for their by customs and manners.

What I liked the most of the story is the friendship between Pen and Morgan, they had known each other since childhood and you can feel their affection for each other and I also like friendship-romance between Morgan and her betrothed Basil, they also have known each other all their life and you can feel the love-friendship between them and although is not a great romance, they´re both happy with being betrothed to each other.

Overall, Perfect Ruin is a good first book in a trilogy, because it takes its time to describe the world where it develops, how society works, why it is believed that the floating city is in the sky and how the government works. The plot has its elements of mystery, intrigue, romance with a dose of friendship and some interesting twists, plus it has lovable characters. I recommend this book for dystopian fans.