Dark Inside
Dark Insideby Jeyn Roberts
Since mankind began, civilizations have always fallen: the Romans, the Greeks, the Aztecs…Now it’s our turn. Huge earthquakes rock the world. Cities are destroyed. But something even more awful is happening. An ancient evil has been unleashed, turning everday people into hunters, killers, crazies.Mason's mother is dying after a terrible car accident. As he endures a last vigil at her hospital bed, his school is bombed and razed to the ground, and everyone he knows is killed. Aries survives an earthquake aftershock on a bus, and thinks the worst is over when a mysterious stranger pulls her out of the wreckage, but she’s about to discover a world changed forever. Clementine, the only survivor of an emergency town hall meeting that descends into murderous chaos, is on the run from savage strangers who used to be her friends and neighbors. And Michael witnesses a brutal road rage incident that is made much worse by the arrival of the police--who gun down the guilty party and then turn on the bystanding crowd.Where do you go for justice when even the lawmakers have turned bad? These four teens are on the same road in a world gone mad. Struggling to survive, clinging on to love and meaning wherever it can be found, this is a journey into the heart of darkness – but also a journey to find each other and a place of safety. (goodreads.com)
Release date: November 1, 2011This is not overly complex Dystopian. It's a fairly light and quick read that has elements of horror and mystery that don't quite resolve in the end.After I finished reading Dark Inside I wasn't sure what I thought about it. I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it. I felt like it had built up all of this momentum and then just fizzled out because, "Hey! There's a sequel!". If I didn't know from the summary above that "An ancient evil has been unleashed" I wouldn't know that had happened at all.See, there are a few major earthquakes that happen in various parts of the world, but we're only focused on Canada and the US in this story. At the same time people are suddenly becoming mindless killing machines. But why?WHY??Nothing is explained in the book. Nothing. I guess it's supposed to be explained in the future books, but you have to give us something in this one in order to care. I was devouring this book because I was so captivated by the mystery of it all. Why are people mindless zombie-like killers? Why are only a handful of teens still in control of their life? WHY? WHY? And yet, as you go on there isn't an answer. All you get are a few cryptic comments from others that you meet through out each journey that don't do anything to help you figure out what the hell is going on.The four main characters were slightly difficult for me to keep track of. At least the two girls had different enough names (Aires & Clementine) that I could tell their chapters apart, but the boys (Mason & Michael) were way too similar to remember who was who. None of them had overly original voices in their chapters and I couldn't remember which plot line belonged to Mason or Michael numerous times. It was frustrating. Then the added extra characters throughout the journey of each of the main ones. Too many people! And so many of these people were not unique enough to stand out, so I didn't really care about any of them.I wanted to know what was going on. I wanted to know why there were earthquakes and why the world was full of crazies who kill for fun. I understand you don't want to reveal everything in the first book in a series, but you have to give us something, right?I was totally caught up with wanting to find the answers and was disappointed when I got to the end and nothing was resolved. All that happened was that all four protagonists ended up in the same place (as I had guessed from the start) and they needed to get to the bottom of this. Guess what? SO DO I!I think the story was great, but it needed to go somewhere and it didn't. I feel like it was stretched just to make more books. The ending was slightly rushed and confusing and it reminded me of my epic English creative writing pieces in high school. I'd get so caught up in the story, I'd realize I was way over the number of pages I needed to hand in and I'd just sort of toss everything in at the end and end it in a page. Heh. My teacher always told me I needed to work on my pacing, that the stories were fantastic but the endings were too abrupt. He was an awesome teacher and I miss him.I was enjoying what I was reading for most of the book, until it became obvious that this was going nowhere. I could have over looked the lack of unique characters if only we'd gotten more information about why this was all happening.I didn't hate the book though, it was just sort of... flat. It could have been so much more. The writing isn't bad at all and the potential is there. It's just not very a very dystopian Dystopia. (If that makes any sense.)Will I read the sequel? Probably, yes. Mostly I just want to know WHAT IS GOING ON!Buy your own copy! AmazonUS
