Review: The Fox Inheritance

The Fox Inheritance by Mary E. Pearson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This is where I'd spend lines and lines lamenting the fact that it feels like every third young adult book is a dystopian novel, but I'll spare you because I actually really likes The Adoration of Jenna Fox as a strange, different dystopian-style novel with a cool sci-fi hook embedded in it.

The Fox Inheritance is the Matrix Reloaded of young adult books.

So where Adoration sits there all nice and pleasant in its sci-fi mystery/horror, Inheritance takes place way, way in the future. The US is pretty much a mess, and two teens are central to the story - they, like Jenna, have been downloaded onto hard drives, reformed into android-type bodies, and then had their consciousnesses uploaded. They know Jenna is still alive, and they have to find her.

The concept is better than the execution for two reasons: one, the first book, while dark in themes, was light in presentation. This is just dark dark dark all the way through. There's little optimism and less daylight to seep through. This leads us to the second point, which is where the book is just not what you'd expect after reading the first book. This is a dark adventure book instead. That's not a bad thing, but it's different, and that didn't entirely work for me. It's like how Matrix Reloaded was not the cyberpunky action movie that the first one was, but rather the dank, pessimistic side to the story.

I'll probably grab the third one when it comes out, but I'm not sure where to go from here. I suppose we'll see.



View all my reviews