Book Review: SOVEREIGN

Title: Sovereign (Part I of the Sovereign Trilogy)

Author: AJ Whitney

Publisher: Blue Handle Publishing

Pages: 177

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐

 

Ten Orphan children, named 331 to 340, have been selected for the decennial Sending, a ritual in which the children are offered to the Sovereign, the reigning deity, in the woods, in exchange for a bountiful harvest for ten years for an unnamed settler/survivor community. Raised in the Orphan Home, the children await the festival.

332, the protagonist, and her best friend, 333, are looking forward to the Sending, until something they overhear leads them to realise that their position isn’t quite as privileged as they imagine it to be.

 

The Prologue opens in the past tense, in the third person limited PoV of an unnamed grey-haired woman. It might as well have been Chapter 1, since this PoV alternates with the 1^st person, present tense PoV of the main character, in every other chapter throughout the novel.

When we first meet the protagonist, whose gender we are unaware of yet, we get the distinct impression that they are running for their life. While we learn later that this is only a game, it does contrast nicely with later events when the game becomes all too real and dangerous.

The description, though minimal, helps evoke the setting to some extent, but large parts still happen in a vacuum. We know nothing about the place or time, or what kind of an economy this is. There’s no timeline to the events, nor any reference to whether this is Planet Earth or a different world. They are the only community alive for miles, so we get no idea about what happened to the rest of the world.

The writing could have been tighter. Early on, I got a sense of a society where everything seems perfect on the surface, but the details that could have fleshed out that impression, details that could have helped us imagine this dystopian and distinctly non-industrial world, were missing.

One of the unnamed characters used to be a baseball coach, we are told, which sounds very bizarre and modern in this Amish-type of world. The grey-haired woman says she misses air conditioning but there is no mention of what happened in this world, why there is no air conditioning, no electric appliances?  What changed to make the world this way? We should have been given some hint at that point.

 

The pace is slow, especially in the present. There was definitely more tension in the grey-haired lady’s 3^rd person account.

 

As a Main Character, 332 didn’t have as much spirit as she thought she had (Incidentally, Harper, the name that 332 takes after she is adopted, is an odd unisex name in an otherwise traditional community). That things weren’t right was not something she realized on her own. It is others trying to fight the system that gets her attention. Also, the manner in which she figures things out is not satisfying. The tension, if any, is subdued.

There is no inciting incident that happens to her. Nor is she forced into a situation where she must act or something dire will happen.

The 1^st person account came across as idyllic. The characterization of the children was weak. Life was altogether too peaceful. Till the 24 percent mark, the children had no clue about their fate. With the core conflict having fizzled out, we plod on in this bucolic world where everything is pleasant.

I understand that the book is for younger readers but not giving agency to the Main Characters weakens the story. Just because a book is meant for middle-grade students is no reason for leaving so many plot holes strewn through.

Also, the discussions on the part of the council are too tame and simplistic. The people agree unanimously that the 10 children should be adopted. Everyone but two are in agreement and those two are easily overruled. At a supposedly critical meeting, the Elders busy themselves relating history lessons to each other for the benefit of the eavesdropping children.

332 hears the truth at the secret meeting for the very first time and yet, afterwards, she is able to repeat the words verbatim despite having heard them only once.

This is one massive and boring ‘tell’ exercise. As though mere talk couldn’t have changed things at any time in the last 300 years. As if revolutions are won by sitting across the table.

There is no information about how the treehouse that 332 and 333 call the Stronghold was built. The girls claim to have built it themselves, but no further information is available to make that claim credible. It’s a room with a trapdoor, walls with windows. Inside there’s a “wobbly old table” and two mismatched chairs in an “eight-foot-square room”. There’s even a large ancient trunk which contains a moth-eaten blanket, a cracked mirror, and a pile of cushions. They could have claimed to have found it, but no, 332 says they built it by themselves.

 

For the most part, we have teenagers talking like philosophers, in a most unreal manner. The dialogue is a boring recounting of what has taken place.

Then suddenly at the 74 percent mark, the tension is upped, without warning. But it is a case of too much too late. After this, the pace picks up with more action trying to compensate for the lack of it earlier.

 

The book ends on a cliffhanger, inviting us to read Book 2 in the series. I don't plan to.

 (I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.)