Atlantia
Ratings9
Average rating3.3
“Utterly captivating. A heroine unlike any I’d met before, a setting I’d never glimpsed, a story I’d never imagined. Atlantia is fresh, wild, and engrossing. I love Ally Condie.” —Shannon Hale, award-winning, bestselling author of Austenland and Dangerous A New York Times Best Seller! Can you hear Atlantia breathing? For as long as she can remember, Rio has dreamed of the sand and sky Above—of life beyond her underwater city of Atlantia. But in a single moment, all Rio’s hopes for the future are shattered when her twin sister, Bay, makes an unexpected choice, stranding Rio Below. Alone, ripped away from the last person who knew Rio’s true self—and the powerful siren voice she has long silenced—she has nothing left to lose. Guided by a dangerous and unlikely mentor, Rio formulates a plan that leads to increasingly treacherous questions about her mother’s death, her own destiny, and the corrupted system constructed to govern the Divide between land and sea. Her life and her city depend on Rio to listen to the voices of the past and to speak long-hidden truths.
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I'm not sure what I was expecting with this book, but it definitely wasn't want I got. The premise was very unique. I loved the idea of Atlantia and the world above and the whole choice between staying below or going above, however I felt like we were thrown in this world with little to not thought or explanation.
The world building in the book was plain bad. I did not get a sense of what Atlantia was truly like, yes the Divide was clearly explained, but the actual workings of Atlantia and what it was like living there was extremely lacking. I don't think we ever even got a full description of Atlantia. I just feel like it was expected I already understood the world when I started the book.
While the world was way under developed, the characters were a struggle too. We barely knew Bay but she was clearly very important to Rio. The entirety of the plot is Rio trying to be reunited with Bay and figure out why she left in the first place. Then you had the side plot of Atlantia falling apart. But the characters seemed dry and I was not at all emotionally invested in them. I did appreciate however, that the romance was not a huge part of this book. True and Rio were cute together and I like them working together to figure out why Bay and Fen left, but their relationship wasn't the central part of the book.
This book had a lot of potential with the idea. But it completely fell short. The world was underdeveloped and the lack of explanation really hindered my enjoyment. I was unable to grasp Atlantia as a place and even the sirens were poorly explained. I'm still not really sure what exactly they are capable of. The ending also seemed rushed and then the book ended quite abruptly without really explaining the consequences of Rio choices in the Above.
2.5/ 5 Stars and only because of the potential.
I listened to this audiobook while traveling and it made a layover fly by. I really enjoyed the story line and the setting, but I had difficulty attaching to the characters in this book. They seemed a little flat to me.
Actual rating: 2.5 stars
Atlantia is actually an interesting book. I always find the concept of underwater cities fascinating, and the world-building is beautiful too. There are lots of detailed descriptions of Atlantia, Above, and the connection between these two worlds. The details can be a bit too much sometimes, but still I find it gorgeous.
The problem is that aside from those things, I feel that the book is incredibly flat. The pacing is really slow. The narrative mainly focuses on Rio's thoughts and not action, so I don't get that much tension from the story. In fact, despite the internal thoughts, I find it hard to connect to Rio... or any other characters aside from Maire, for that matter. Rio strikes me as uncaring and selfish, so I couldn't bring myself to care about her. She does show some growth late into the book though, and I like how the ending is handled.
It's really too bad. I wanted to love this book because of its concept and the fact that the heroine is a siren, but it just didn't work for me.
