Early Review: Icons by Margaret Stohl
Icons by Margaret Stohl
Icons #1
Your heart beats only with their permission.
Everything changed on The Day. The day the windows shattered. The day the power stopped. The day Dol's family dropped dead. The day Earth lost a war it didn't know it was fighting.
Since then, Dol has lived a simple life in the countryside -- safe from the shadow of the Icon and its terrifying power. Hiding from the one truth she can't avoid.
She's different. She survived. Why?
When Dol and her best friend, Ro, are captured and taken to the Embassy, off the coast of the sprawling metropolis once known as the City of Angels, they find only more questions. While Ro and fellow hostage Tima rage against their captors, Dol finds herself drawn to Lucas, the Ambassador's privileged son. But the four teens are more alike than they might think, and the timing of their meeting isn't a coincidence. It's a conspiracy.
Within the Icon's reach, Dol, Ro, Tima, and Lucas discover that their uncontrollable emotions -- which they've always thought to be their greatest weaknesses -- may actually be their greatest strengths.
Bestselling author Margaret Stohl delivers the first book in a heart-pounding series set in a haunting new world where four teens must piece together the mysteries of their pasts -- in order to save the future.
This review is going to be a bit different than my normal reviews as I can't seem to find enough to say to follow my normal format, which really is a shame as I had really wanted to love ICONS. I mean the premise sounded fantastic, and I LOVE the Beautiful Creatures series, so I knew I would have to get my hands on this. But quite frankly after finishing it, the biggest thing I can say about ICONS was that it was well... odd.
ICONS is rather long, and incredibly slow, and frankly, I can't even tell you much about what happened. Not because I don't want to spoil things, but because I'm still not quite sure what I read. I spent the entire book waiting for something to take off, only for the "main event" to leave even more confusion in the end. In a sci-fi book such as this, I do expect a bit of slowness as there usually is a great deal of world building involved, but I can't even say that was what held ICONS back for me. In fact, when it comes down to it, I think the world building was rather lacking overall. Sure I get that the point that a lot of the mystery was that Dol and the rest of them had been kept in the dark about who they really were, but I still needed a bit more sooner. Even by the end, things had never really formed enough for me to fully understand what was going on. Even worse, the characters just didn't seem to have enough depth for me to connect with them. I just didn't "get" them or their motivations, making it even harder to stay focused on the book.
While reading this book, I found myself skimming more often than not, as I just couldn't get involved in the story or the characters. When it comes down to it, the only reason ICONS wasn't a DNF for me was due to my determination to see it through as I hoped for that "click" to happen. Unfortunately, it never did, and I will not be continuing on with this series.
(Received a copy from the publisher via Netgalley)
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