“I'm no longer a daughter.No longer a granddaughter.No longer a girl with dreams. With hope.I'm a weapon, now.”
I hate this book with the heat of a thousand suns!
The “post-apocalyptic” setting was one of the most ridiculous settings I've ever come across:
> The “city” of Baalboden was a glorified fortified village.
> We have not idea who are the Rowansmarks exactly and why they are building weapons to obliterate other communities starting with Baalboden.
> No idea what the heck is “The Cursed One”. Why can't they just blow it up?
> The villain is so over the top evil that it's ridiculous. He's just evil to be evil. And when they plan on taking him down by using the THING that almost annihilated human kind? What in the world was that?
Rachel and Logan were the most insipid, irritating protagonists. I'd lock them in a dungeon and throw away the key. I've stumbled upon horrible characters before, but in combination with such a wishy-washy setting? Never.
The whole book was a mess. It felt like the author had a checklist of things that sounded good to her and just threw them in the blender:
> one “badass” & hot redhead (who's actually a total nitwit)
> one handsome manly man treating her like property
> one for-no-reason-whatsoever misogynistic society
> nauseating declarations of love and make up sessions in inappropriate circumstances
> one good for nothing villain
> one crazy monster thingy that spits fire
> a bit of quarrel between “cities” and a mystery device to advance the plot
> Tree people???!!!
> a few deaths to jerk a few tears
> long, boring journey
> dungeon
> explosions
> tracking devices
> cloaks
> torches
> horses
> Wasteland?!!!
> senseless revenge plan
> more declarations of love
What a waste of time.
I can't believe I've waited so long to read this. I adore these characters. All of them.
“Don't think of introversion as something that needs to be cured.”
I didn't realize that the world had it out for introverts but maybe it's just my problem for missing it?
Based on this book's gross generalization I'm neither an introvert nor an extrovert. While I am an introvert at my core, my personality is also sprinkled with characteristics that are attributed solely to extroversion. Apparently I'm the Divergent in Cain's world which is divided in these two factions: introverts and extroverts.
I found little use to the book. Barely any insightful information is provided. Like I said, it was overall just a gross generalization. Cain's view of the matter is seriously biased.
I am all for protecting and cherishing introversion, after all, I am mostly introverted. And I have had that held against me on occasions. I felt wronged, of course. Nonetheless, I was quite taken aback by the villainization of extroverts. Cain portrays introverts as these perpetually misunderstood geniuses, who need to be handled like delicate flowers, who would fix all the world's problems if only they would be allowed to take over. Because introverts are such good folks. And extroverts are these loud, stupid, intimidating assholes who never listen to the voice of reason, who only care about themselves and always try to manipulate everyone for their own gain, therefore they are those who will bring on the Apocalypse. Even when she makes some feeble attempts to give extroversion some credit it always comes out as a insult that's masked a compliment.
The truth is, throughout my lifetime, I've faced a lot of assholes, and they were from both camps. The extroverted ones used loud, aggressive methods of intimidation while the introverted ones used insidious passive-aggressive tactics. None was better than the other. So it's really not about where you are on the introversion-extroversion scale is what you end up doing with it and this point seems to completely escape Cain's view.
This book was meant to stroke my introverted ego, but it failed miserably. To me, it felt like a big pity party while I was expecting a fairly objective opinion based on scientific findings about introversion and extroversion.
I'm not saying that her criticism of today's western society is invalid. And that she doesn't have a point when she talks about how awful corporations and the educational system are. Or about how they brake spirits and suppress valid ideas just based on the delivery. Loud, arrogant, impulsive, stupid people are usually the ones who end up in charge everywhere nowadays and this is causing so many issue for everyone. But it's not a simple matter of introverts vs. extroverts.
The only few sections that were not completely tainted by her personal convictions, did provide some useful information and helped me confirm the knowledge of my own personality. But nothing was revolutionary, I had an intuitive understanding of most of those ideas.
Needless to say I was very disappointed by this book. It's of little value from a scientific point of view. For me it was mostly Cain's way of dealing with her own challenges of being an introvert and frankly she comes out as a somewhat bitter, passive-aggressive individual.
Otherwise, the narration was quite pleasant and there are quite a few good quotes and ideas, too bad they were tainted with the author's defensive attitude.
1,762 Books
See all
