Review of Crashland by Sean Williams

Advance Review of Sean Williams' Crashland

Release Date: November 4th, 2014

Synopsis as found on GoodReads.com:

The Matrix meets the Uglies series in this science fiction thriller, the second in the Twinmaker trilogy by Sean Williams.

Where is Q?

Clair and Jesse have barely been reunited when the world is plunged into its biggest crisis since the Water Wars. The d-mat network is broken. The world has ground to a halt. People are trapped, injured, dying. It’s the end of the world as Clair knows it—and it’s partly her fault.

“The girl who killed d-mat” is enlisted to track down her missing friend Q—the rogue AI who repeatedly saved Clair’s life. Q is the key to fixing the system, but she isn’t responding to calls for help, and even if she did...can she be trusted?

Targeted by dupes, abandoned by her friends, caught in a web of lies that strike at the very essence of who she is, Clair finds powerful allies in RADICAL, secretive activists who are the polar opposite of anti-d-mat terrorist group WHOLE. However, if she helps them find Q, will she be inadvertently trapping her friend in a life of servitude—or worse, sending her to an early death by erasure?

Caught between pro- and anti-d-mat philosophies, in a world on the brink of all-out war, Clair must decide where she stands—and who she stands with, at the end.

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There are only 2 reasons why it would take me FIVE days to read a book that it would normally take me 2 to 3 days to read: 1, I love the book so much that I want to savor every second of it, or 2, it is so confusing and boring that I fall asleep every time I pick it up. I am sorry Mr. Williams, but your book was of great use in catching up on my sleep. I feel awful in ever saying that a book is bad, because I know an author puts time into writing a book & I am a fan of all Young Adult books, but there was not a whole lot that I loved about this one.

In Twinmaker, we follow Clair on her journey to save her friend Libby from the dangerous program Improvement that is duplicating its users. In Crashland, Clair has given up (for the majority of the book) on Libby. I feel like her whole reason for going to action in book 1 was forgotten. This caused me to be confused for the whole beginning of the book. By the ending, I'm so fed up with it, I have been rushing through it so I could get it over. The whip lash I've gotten from the back & forth decision making is killing me... and every character that died in the series is suddenly able to come back from the dead at the end of the book?? Maybe that was why no one was sad when their family members were offed?

I gave book 2 a chance after I was unhappy with book 1,  I wouldn't read book 3.