The city of Kersh is a safe haven, but the price of safety is high. Everyone has a genetic Alternate—a twin raised by another family—and citizens must prove their worth by eliminating their Alts before their twentieth birthday. Survival means advanced schooling, a good job, marriage—life. Fifteen-year-old West Grayer has trained as a fighter, preparing for the day when her assignment arrives and she will have one month to hunt down and kill her Alt. But then a tragic misstep shakes West’s confidence. Stricken with grief and guilt, she’s no longer certain that she’s the best version of herself, the version worthy of a future. If she is to have any chance of winning, she must stop running not only from her Alt, but also from love . . . though both have the power to destroy her.
The problem with Dualed, aside from its irritating title (I just find it, personally, irritating, and think this could have come with a way better title) is that it just doesn't make sense. [SPOILERS] I can accept some very wild, crazy premises. Heck, one of my favorite series is about high society London in the 1800's being ruled over by werewolves and vampires. Crazy premise. But Gail Carriger pulls it off excellently. But here in Dualed, nothing actually makes any sense. The world is all like a crazy set-up for the author to pull off her story, but it never feels rational or logical, and was in fact so frustrating to read that I couldn't bear it at points.
So, the idea of this being a dystopian society, and the one "safe" city, is kind of ridiculous. Because people walk around killing each other all the time. I kept waiting for it to make sense, like, tell me why the Board (government) essentially decides to kill off HALF OF ITS POPULATION. To make an "army" of citizens? Except then they let them get desk jobs and get old and fat and decidedly un-army like? So, what was the point of making your people kill their alternate before they turn 20, if you're just going to let them dwindle into something entirely useless, should there ever be a war? And also, the few times the outside ("Surround") is mentioned, it sounds like they have high-tech warfare equipment, such as bombers and fighter jets. So what is the point of making your citizens kill with knives and guns?
Also, there are so few rules surrounding the kids killing their alternate thing. Like, dude, totes okay if you accidentally kill a passerby in the job? So, not only do you have your population killing half of itself off every single day, you also have them killing more of the people around them. You're effectively reducing your population by 3/4's every single time you send an alt their kill code. What is the point of that? If you want to create a population of soldiers, just enforce them to enlist into the army and train them all. What I'm saying is, the furiously ill-thought out premise makes the entire book shaky and ridiculous.
I didn't even care about the main character or her very infrequently mentioned love interest by the end. When the end comes, I was just glad it was over. This book failed entirely on its promising idea, and also cluttered up the middle with endless kill scenes that did nothing to further the plot. It was a huge disappointment, to say the least.
I was given an advanced reader's copy via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
- Fire
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