Review of 'The Jewel' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
This is a YA book, so judging it more leniently than I would if it were aimed at adults. It's sort of a hybrid between The Hunger Games and The Handmaid's Tale, and is told first-person by the main character, Violet. It's not terribly original and there are certainly quite a lot of unanswered questions about the plot, but you know what? It's very readable and I enjoyed it, and sometimes you don't need to be all about Great Literature.
It's like Hunger Games in the stratification of society into districts themed around occupations, and all far poorer than the noble area (The Jewel). There's also hints of an upcoming revolultion, though that's clearly not going to happen until a later book in the series, if it does. The nobles are for some unexplained plot reason unable to bear their own children due to damaged chromosomes, and the only way …
This is a YA book, so judging it more leniently than I would if it were aimed at adults. It's sort of a hybrid between The Hunger Games and The Handmaid's Tale, and is told first-person by the main character, Violet. It's not terribly original and there are certainly quite a lot of unanswered questions about the plot, but you know what? It's very readable and I enjoyed it, and sometimes you don't need to be all about Great Literature.
It's like Hunger Games in the stratification of society into districts themed around occupations, and all far poorer than the noble area (The Jewel). There's also hints of an upcoming revolultion, though that's clearly not going to happen until a later book in the series, if it does. The nobles are for some unexplained plot reason unable to bear their own children due to damaged chromosomes, and the only way they can have children is to take fertile girls with particular magic gifts from the poorest circles to be surrogates. The surrogates are trained in very limited types of magic which they'll be able to use to repair the nobles' chromosome damage as they carry the baby. Surrogates are sold off in an auction and treated like property (Handmaid's Tale style).
This novel follows Violet through saying goodbye to her family, completing her surrogate training (which inexplicably fails to teach her anything about pregnancy, what to actually expect in The Jewel, or how her magic is supposed to be applied to a fetus), her auction, and her service to the noble house that bought her. All while she tries to keep track of the other surrogate friends who were sold at the same time, figure out how the noble society works and whether it's possible to escape it, and fall in love with an illicit Boy. Oh, and it ends in a terrible cliffhanger. Ok, so writing the details down doesn't make it sound any more like serious literature, but I think teens who enjoyed The Hunger Games would enjoy it a lot, and it's an entertaining beach read.
