The Scorpion Rules

I was really looking forward to this one as it was promising to become one of the biggest new Dystopian novels of the year.

The concept had me immediately and after that I just wanted to read it. In a world that has almost been destroyed by climate change (always the climate change though) and a lot of different wars an AI called Taris has taken control by taking the heirs of all world leaders and threatening to kill them. Called The Children of Peace, theirs lives are forfeited if their parents go to war. We see it happen right at the beginning of the book.

Elian’s arrival at the Prefecture, the school/prison of the Children of Peace, will be the start of a new era and new understandings for everyone involved. Although at times I was wondering just what Elian was doing there. He’s so completely different from all the other characters that sometimes it reeked of plot device. The romance, although triangular, had some refreshing aspects. Taris as the AI villain was quite interesting though he’s lost out to the AI of Illuminae.

While I could see this novel certainly has it flaws (it’s being info-dense at certain times, not everything is making sense, etc), I still immensely enjoyed reading it and wanted to find out what was going to happen.

O, I see now that I haven’t mentioned Greta, the main character at all, and I think that is the book biggest flaw. The main character isn’t that special. Or memorable.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!