Glow (edition 2011)

When I started reading this, I thought for sure it would be a DNF. The blatant secular/religious divide in the book really made me uncomfortable...because I could agree with either point of view at any given time. I also worried a big chunk of the novel would be angsty and teen hormones. Then there was the Kieran-Seth tensions. Who's right? Who's wrong? Annnnnd, then there is the New Horizon vs. Empyrean. What will happen to the girls? What HAS happened to the girls? Some of the story is a little compressed and convenient; but I couldn't put this down until the very last page. ( )

An uncomfortable read, mashed on many ick points for me, including the Lord of the Flies segment, the odd gender divided plot, and several others. If I were religious I might also be bothered by some of the anti-religious viewpoints, although in truth I enjoy seeing this treated by SF, even if it's done as heavy-handedly as it is here.

There is also an uncomfortable tension between it being YA SF, which I have been trained to not expect much scientific rigour from (all those Heinlein juviniles on Mars and Venus, etc..), and it being a generation ship story, which is a SF framing that demands at least pretty plausible science -- otherwise why bother? And the scientific slipups are just so egregious here, including unexplained instantaneous communications, while also seemingly so easy to fix.

Worst of all, it may have sucked me into reading a sequel. ( )

With so many similar books coming out in the post-Hunger-Games phenonemon, I've been leaning towards skepticism of most new releases in the teen-dystopia genre being compared to the series. Especially--when considering--as more series come out, the quality seems to be descending as the market is flooded with books riding the current young-adult trend.

Having said that, while going into this with all of this in mind, I ended up enjoying it. It was interesting and the writing was rather good, with characters that initially felt stereotypical becoming more layered as the story began to unfold (as well as how each character's point-of-view affects how another one's behavior is interpreted). Although in the same genre, it has less in common with Hunger Games and felt more like [b:Across the Universe|8235178|Across the Universe (Across the Universe, #1)|Beth Revis|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1301828495s/8235178.jpg|13082532] and the [b:Inside Out|7059135|Inside Out (Insider, #1)|Maria V. Snyder|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41FZRv72nPL._SL75_.jpg|6662880] series with the space travel and claustrophobic feeling. Thematically, it made me recall the critically-acclaimed-yet-not-read-enough (in my opinion) Chaos Walking series by Patrick Ness. While not up there with this series, the shady adults and not being able to know who to trust, along with the religious themes and what values to take to the new worlds makes me think of that series more than Hunger Games, but without the language play and high level tension of [b:The Knife of Never Letting Go|2118745|The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1)|Patrick Ness|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1277071696s/2118745.jpg|2124180]. Still, it's a great start and I'm curious.

On a different note, the fertility/sexuality of teens and how it is manipulated by adults is a popping up in quite a few dystopia novels. While this one had more than its fair share of disturbing moments, I do think it was handled well (so far, at least) in comparison to some of the other books I've read like this. Also, I have yet to fully form cohesive thoughts on why this pattern seems to be more and more prevalent, but it clearly is. Anyway, enjoyable. More of a 3.75/5. ( )

I gave it 100 pages.

Interesting story, and it had potential, but it became far too preachy for this atheist. ( )