Review: Under the Never Sky

After a near-death experience that nearly shuts down all the realms, Aria is exiled from Reverie and banished to the outer wasteland, a world she knows nothing about. Sheltered Aria has very little chance of survival- or of finding her missing mother- unless she teams up with an Outsider.

Perry is an Outsider. His nephew has been kidnapped by Dwellers and he has no way to get him back, that is until he meets Aria. He can’t stand her, but needs her if he needs information on Dwellers so that he can rescue his nephew.

Worlds apart, Aria and Perry must work together in order to find what they’ve each lost; as they travel a barren wasteland that has been torn apart by violent Aether storms, they come closer to losing their hearts.

Just a word of warning: I’m sick as I’m writing this, which is why I might sound a little bit crazy at times during this review. But my opinions remain the same.

Hm. Under the Never Sky was a tough book. There was so much hype over this title in the months preceding its release, that I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Let’s start with the genre: it was marketed as dystopian (to me, at least), yet there is no social or political commentary on the nature of humans or on how we need to change ourselves now to prevent this sort of future. As the reader, I’m never sure of why people must live in virtual realities and where this so-called ‘Aether’ appeared from. There is no explanation given about how and why the world has become this way. For some, this might be okay. But for me, the lack of world building was too big of a gaping hole to ignore.

My biggest problem with this book was that I just could not force myself to care. About any of it. The characters were bland. The relationship boring. The world underdeveloped. By the end, I just couldn’t wait for it to be over and found myself thinking of other things while reading it. Of course, this might not have anything to do with the book, and might be the mental state of mind I was in while reading it, but I did take a few days to read it, putting it down and picking it up in hopes that I would fall in love with something. But I didn’t.

What I did appreciate about this book was the way Aria and Perry’s relationship developed. Unlike many YA novels these days, there was no fast falling-head-over-heels in love scenario; Aria and Perry spend a good amount of time hating each other for good reason, slowly warming up to each other. But as soon as they’ve ‘fallen’, its all downhill from there, full of cheesy lines and awkward making out sessions.

I didn’t hate this book. Hate would imply a strong emotion. Instead, I just couldn’t be bothered to care about the characters, the story, the conflict (or lack thereof), or the ending. Only two days after finishing Under the Never Sky, I can barely remember it or the characters, so its safe to say I’ll probably pass on the sequel.

So for that: 2/5.

Thanks for reading,

Ikhlas