Genre: Dystopian, Middle Grade, Young Adult, Science Fiction
Pages: 332
Publication: January 19th 2017
Synopsis:
Fahrenheit 451 meets The Giver in this gripping story about the power of words and the dangers of censorship.
In the city of Ark, speech is constrained to five hundred sanctioned words. Speak outside the approved lexicon and face banishment. The exceptions are the Wordsmith and his apprentice Letta, the keepers and archivists of all language in their post-apocalyptic, neo-medieval world.
On the death of her master, Letta is suddenly promoted to Wordsmith, charged with collecting and saving words. But when she uncovers a sinister plan to suppress language and rob Ark’s citizens of their power of speech, she realizes that it’s up to her to save not only words, but culture itself.
My Thoughts
| 2.5 Savvy Crowns is more like it.
Once the world was full of crooked politicians telling lies, using words to corrupt the world and when The Melting began (all of the ice caps,) it was decided that things would change, no more countless words… now everyone would have a word limit, only a set list of words they could use or be labeled as a Desecrator and risk being banished. Amongst the population there is a Wordsmith who collects old words so true language is not forgotten, Benjamin and his apprentice Letta achieve this. Except when Benjamin goes missing Letta must take over and an injured Desecrator shows up. What is she to do? As far as world building goes this book deserves a round of applause, it gave world information, reasoning as to why things were and depicted the divide in people. Characters? I enjoyed them. Those who had skepticism were appropriately done, I don’t really have qualms with the characters. My issue is actually with how the story was paced, or how very little occurred so it felt like this book was mostly words to fill in space, which is amusing given the premise of the book. While the book started off wonderfully the second half and even later dragged on with events that weren’t quite important to the story line which created some boredom for me. I did enjoy the idea, but this particular issue for me is what dropped the rating immensely. If you like dystopian novels or the idea of extreme censorship being portrayed then this book is for you. How do you organize your bookshelves? By title? By author, by color? Share! |
Book Savvy Reviews 
Hm I just got approved for this, so I’ll have to be careful 🙂
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It’s not that it isn’t a well written book or that the idea fails, it’s that for a book that is about censorship and limiting the amount of words a person can speak – it’s full of words and fluff. Nothing really transpires in the book at all and when you think it will it’s just blahhh… I enjoyed it, I mean it was an okay read, but… the big BUT is… it was super wordy with not a lot of events.
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