Review: Under the Never Sky by Veronica Rossi

Title:  Under the Never Sky
Author:  Veronica Rossi
Series:  Under the Never Sky
Publisher:  HarperCollins
Publication Date:  January 3, 2012
Source:  purchased
Links: Amazon | Goodreads
Rating: 

From Goodreads:

Aria is a teenager in the enclosed city of Reverie. Like all Dwellers, she spends her time with friends in virtual environments, called Realms, accessed through an eyepiece called a Smarteye. Aria enjoys the Realms and the easy life in Reverie. When she is forced out of the pod for a crime she did not commit, she believes her death is imminent. The outside world is known as The Death Shop, with danger in every direction.

As an Outsider, Perry has always known hunger, vicious predators, and violent energy storms from the swirling electrified atmosphere called the Aether. A bit of an outcast even among his hunting tribe, Perry withstands these daily tests with his exceptional abilities, as he is gifted with powerful senses that enable him to scent danger, food and even human emotions.

They come together reluctantly, for Aria must depend on Perry, whom she considers a barbarian, to help her get back to Reverie, while Perry needs Aria to help unravel the mystery of his beloved nephew’s abduction by the Dwellers. Together they embark on a journey challenged as much by their prejudices as by encounters with cannibals and wolves. But to their surprise, Aria and Perry forge an unlikely love - one that will forever change the fate of all who live UNDER THE NEVER SKY.

Review:

I buddy-read this one with my friend Michele over at A Belle’s Tales as part of the DAC 2012. (Her review can be found here.)

Under the Never Sky is one of those books that, had I been able to, I would have stayed up until 5am to finish, like Chele did. No hard feelings, Michele…I know you can’t help yourself when it comes to yummy fictional boys. :D

As I was saying, it was one of those books. You know the kind I’m talking about…fast-paced and very hard to put down once you get started. And for this book, that was right from the very first page for me. No respite for the weary here. Once the action gets going – and I’m serious, it’s almost right from the start – it doesn’t stop, and it took all my effort to stop reading and make myself go to bed that first night. And I immediately finished the book the next day because I just had to know how the trek was going. (That, and Michele was very eager to discuss since she’d already finished it…lol.)

Okay, so you know there’s action, but there’s also a very engaging love story. Based on the premise for this book, I wasn’t expecting much in the way of romantic encounters, maybe because I was expecting the characters’ prejudices against each other to really be too much for them to ever forge a connection. Prejudice has a way of doing that. But the love in this story is to be revered. They hate each other. They tolerate each other. Bad things happen. More bad things happen. They rely on each other. They become friends. And THEN they fall in love. It’s beautiful, really, in the way that it’s realistic and not an immediate, all-consuming love.

This story is intriguing and amazing and another dozen adjectives that mean awesome. It depicts the ultimate sibling rivalry. It portrays an honest and open relationship. It reveals how appearances can be deceiving. And with all of that, it shows how, even in the future, some things never change. In this novel, it’s the Dwellers versus the Outsiders, but the difference between these two sects could be simplified as the “haves” and “have-nots.” Whether by choice or out of necessity, this is how the world works, and apparently, that’s how it will always work. I guess what I’m saying is, I value the honesty of this book.

Just thinking about certain things from this book makes me want to go back and re-read it. Or purchase the audio so I can listen to it at work, as I am sometimes wont to do. So, yeah, for my first Debut Author Challenge book, I couldn’t have asked for a better pick. If this book is any indication of how the rest of the books I read this year are going to go, I am going to be riding Cloud Nine for a very long time.