Taken by Erin Bowman // A Solid Dystopian

Taken (Taken, #1) by Erin Bowman
Genres: Dystopian (YA)
Pages: 360
Goodreads

There are no men in Claysoot. There are boys—but every one of them vanishes at midnight on his eighteenth birthday. The ground shakes, the wind howls, a blinding light descends…and he’s gone.
They call it the Heist.
Gray Weathersby’s eighteenth birthday is mere months away, and he’s prepared to meet his fate–until he finds a strange note from his mother and starts to question everything he’s been raised to accept: the Council leaders and their obvious secrets. The Heist itself. And what lies beyond the Wall that surrounds Claysoot–a structure that no one can cross and survive.
Climbing the Wall is suicide, but what comes after the Heist could be worse. Should he sit back and wait to be taken–or risk everything on the hope of the other side?

Taken is definitely an underrated dystopian novel. It has everything you’d look for in one: a society run 100% by government, a rebellion, a mystery about “whodunnit?” So, let’s just dive into the nitty-gritty of it:

This book has a male POV. Hallelujah! To be honest, I was getting a little burnt out with the “girl saves the world” narrative, so I was super excited to find out this one had a male POV.

Gray is kind of the stereotypical boy. He knows how to handle himself in tough situations, but he definitely thinks about girls a bit too much (considering the tough situations). But, hey, like I said, stereotypical boy.

His character did feel a little bland to me. I didn’t feel like there were enough internal struggles for him, even though there were clearly things he should have been conflicted about, I didn’t feel it was translated well in his narrative.

That might have to do with the pace – which is very fast-paced. The pace was like a snowball rolling down a mountain. Things just kept happening. This was amazing for the story, I kept turning page after page after page and was excited, but it took a toll on the character development.

With that said, this is the first book in a trilogy (and there are novellas as well), so his character will probably develop even more as the story goes on.

Even though this book had a male POV, it still had some awesome chicks in it. Bree is my favorite, but I don’t want to go into too much detail because SPOILERS, just know, she’s tough.

The writing itself is fairly simple to grasp, there is nothing hiding between the lines. That’s not always a bad thing, so it didn’t bother me too much. I do wish the world building was a bit more complete. I got confused during some explanations of how things were laid out across the area.

Overall, I found this book very entertaining. It had the perfect formula for a good dystopian novel & series. There is a ton of potential with this one, so I’ll continue to see if my qualms are resolved. Sometimes the first book in a series spends a lot of time developing the story, that some of our questions aren’t fully answered just yet.

If you love Divergent or The Maze Runner and are having withdrawals from the lack of new novels in those series, you should definitely pick this one up!

 

Rating Report
Plot
Characters
Writing
World Building
Overall:	3.5 / 5