Pure

Well. That was unimpressive.

There was so much going on this book and I felt its efforts to be this big thing. There's the post-apocalyptic world with its utopia/dystopian side and its wasteland side, the conspiracy theories, the politics, the militia, the science, the mutiple POVs. There are seeds of epic here. Or maybe Baggott just got carried away. Unfortunately, everything came off as really sloppy to me. She doesn't literally write “and then this happens” but she might as well have. Instead its more like, “Oh and did I mention [insert previously unmentioned piece of world building here]? Well, its going to be relevant in about two pages, so listen up, Bradwell's going to explain it to you.” Occasionally this even is done retroactively, which is so not cool.

The multiple POVs were really not necessary, since the characters were already so close in proximity it just made things feel really cluttered, especially towards the end when the POV would actually switch within a scene. I thought writers only did that in bad fan fiction. I think the story could've benefited a lot if the different POVs were done in large chunks, rather than skipping around from chapter to chapter.

There are some plot aspects that are interesting. Some stuff seemed like it was done for shock value, this book seems to be annoyingly proud of how gritty it is. However, unlike most dystopian novels these days, Pure is stemmed more from real aspects of culture that are developing today (which is why I was a bit thrown when it became more clear that the Before seemed a lot further from present day than originally implied). The Feminine Feminists I thought was a clever reference to the way conservative groups today have been appropriating feminist language to further oppress women and non-binaries, not to mention the book overall handles how sexism would evolve in such a world really well. There are no baby factories, but when a man asks a teenage girl if she is “intact,” well, that's all you need to know.

There are smaller things that I liked. El Capitan and his brother Helmud are disturbingly fascinating. Ingership could've really been something as a villain, but he just didn't feel vivid enough (might've been the weird clash of his perfect little farmhouse and his metallic hinged jaw, it was great in theory, but I never felt like there was a good grip on his character), and his wife's story overpowered him. Overall though, most of the character interactions were really predictable, and I did not care about the romances at all.

So, yeah, its kind of hard coming out of a book that has so much potential but ends up feeling rather amateurish. And there's the whole body horror thing that would normally totally be up my alley, but it never really stacked up. Oh well.

(Galley received from NetGalley.com.)