Ratings

Content Ratings based on a 0-5 scale where
0 = no objectionable content and
5 = an excessive or disturbing level of content

Guide to Rating System

LANGUAGE

VIOLENCE

SEXUAL CONTENT

ADULT THEMES

Ratings Explanation

Language:  “The plan is we kick their asses.”   “What the hell for?”  “Bad-ass friends.”  “You don’t give a damn about Fausto?”  “The New Smoke wasn’t some hidden encampment in the wild, where people crapped into holes…”  “the New System sucks”  “Crap”.

Violence:  Tally does not want to kill David.  She wants to see him tamed and turned into a bubblehead, pretty and clueless and out of her life once and for all.   There are references to the self-mutilation found in book two.  “Breaking out of bubble-headedness with nothing but a sharp knife against her own skin”.   Shay is given a jolt from a shock-stick by David.  Tally saves Shay from drowning in the river.  Shay suggests to Tally that she might just need a cut to help her think clearly.  Shay uses her knife to cut the palm of Tally’s hand.  Shay and Tally break into the armory, and let loose “Hunger in nano form”, which eats and destroys everything in its path. Hovercrafts follow Shay and Tally to the city limits, bombarding them with grenades.  Tally and Fausto engage in hand to hand combat as he tries to inject her with a needle.  The “New Smoke”/ City of Diego and The Armada go to war.  Zane dies.  Tally reflects on the deaths she has witnessed.  Tally kicks Dr. Cable in the stomach, and does a roundhouse kick into the jaw of her closest pursuer.

Sexual Content:  “Shay brushes against the random boy, a flex of muscles gliding down her body like a flick through a rope.  His body starting to follow her movements.”  Tally is jealous as she sees David brush fingers with a Smokey girl.  “That was his thing: going around recruiting uglies to run away, seducing the best and the smartest city kids with the promise of rebellion.”   Tally climbs the island’s slopes through a pleasure garden.  Tally and Zane kiss.  She is repulsed by his weakness as an unspecial and barely average.  Tally’s clothes are stripped off of her, as she is lifted into an operating tank.

Adult Themes:  Revolution.  Beer consumption.  Shay and Tally are still pitted against one another.  Shay’s anger and jealousy have not disappeared.

Summary

Tally was not positive that “Specials” actually existed.  Now, transformed into a special Special, she is one of them –a Cutter.  Dr. Cable engineers Tally to be a weapon, to root out rebellion.  Her body has been reconstructed around a reinforced ceramic skeleton.  Her fingernails and teeth have been weaponized, and her muscles and reflex centers significantly augmented.  She is a member of “The Cutters”.  Shay, the leader of The Cutters, is given orders to find the “New Smoke”, the rebel’s hideout.  Tally and Shay  break into the armory and let loose an ancient weapon, “Hunger in nano form”.  Dr. Cable leads the city to believe that they are under attack from the rebels.  She is then given control of the military.  Shay and Tally find the “New Smoke” and choose to defend the “New Smoke” against Dr. Cable’s diabolical plan to rule the world.

I really enjoyed the FIRST book in this series.  However, the strong moral values you receive in the first book are completely obliterated in the subsequent installments. This story just fizzled out.  I am very concerned with the “cutting/self-mutilation”.  I do not recommend this book for the age group it is marketed to (Grades 6-10).  However, should you choose to read this book, proceed with caution.

©2010 The Literate Mother