Title: Glitch
Author: Brenda Pandos
Publisher/Year: Obsidian Mountain Publishing 1/31/14
Length: 260 Pages
Series: Lost in Time #1

Overview

Blue Eyes and his illegal slip of paper are about to shatter Abby’s perfect world.

When a mysterious guy from the forbidden zone sneaks a note to a beautiful young girl from Brighton, she must decide if she should turn him in or follow what the note says.

Eighteen-year-old Abby has no trouble following Brighton’s rules. For one, she’s OCD about checking her Date of Death clock latched to her wrist, making sure her decisions never shorten her lifetime, and two, she enjoys the peace Brighton has to offer. But when her best friend returns from her Advice Meeting–a glimpse into the future–shell shocked and won’t tell Abby what’s happened, she’s worried what awaits her meeting in a few days. The stranger with blue-eyes warned her not to go, but does Abby dare enter the forbidden zone to get answers? Or is she doomed to live the life her glimpse is about to show her?

My Thoughts

What do we have here.  A bit of Dystopia and a bit of sci-fi fantasy – all rolled into one.  Interesting mix right?  We start off in a time where there’s a world inside of a bubble (or walls if you want to be technical) because those who live inside are the survivors – people who were either The Chosen or who were deemed to have value to society after the attack or outbreak of a virus turned people into zombies.  The people who live in the walls now are the descendants (and some are actual survivors) – trying to live their lives as they were laid out.  Each person in this life has a DOD watch – a watch that provides them with their date and time of death so that they know what they need to do to increase their lifespan or what they are doing to make it decrease.

We meet Abby when she’s just ‘coming of age’ in a sense – she’s finally at that age when she’s allowed to meet her ‘Compliment’ – her future self…odd right?  This is where the sci-fi bit comes in.  at the age of 18, you’re able to have a 10 minute conversation with your future self to see what you will become and all of that.  What makes things complicated is that the day before Abby is set to go, she takes a tumble while playing baseball and meets the most beautiful blue eyed boy who gives her a note that says ‘don’t meet your compliment’.  Blue eyes are taboo for some reason and well, no one doesn’t want to meet their compliment – so abby’s all out of sorts.

She goes anyway, and this is where she learns that she’s a glitch.  Her name isn’t on the board and things get more strange from there.  After she’s met a compliment, she’s leaving only to overhear whispered voices saying ‘that was close’.  So she’s thinking that something’s up.

Fast forward a night or 2 when she and her best friend Elle have decided that Blue Eyes is from outside of the walls and that they have to find him and their plans just get more and more complicated since their escape route is found out and they have to re-plan.  While that would be enough, Abby is then kidnapped and taken over the wall and that is where the story really gets good for her.  Much more sci fi to come.

Outside the walls, Abby is enlightened to learn that what she was taught all her life isn’t really the truth, it’s what the society and government want people to believe to keep them in order.  Maybe there were no zombies – the people outside have never seen them.  Life outside the walls is quite amazing too – the land is great, there’s so much air and freedom – and those are all things that Abby was led to believe aren’t the truth.

If that wasn’t enough, she learns that she’s valuable to the government since she’s…..’The Oracle’.  I don’t know about anyone else, but all of these things just take us a bit too far in the fantasy direction.  anyhow – the oracle has the ability to time jump and well, jumping through time they all go.

I’m going to stop there since we’re really going all over the place.  while there’s a lot of great stuff going on here, i’m still not sure where i want to classify this book – as dystopia or Fantasy – so i’m leaving that up to you.  what we do have though is a great YA romance since we see Abby and Blue Eyes begin to realize that there’s a connection – and we see that there’s more to the world than Abby and the folks in Brighton were taught which is exactly what we hope for in this genre.  There’s a bit of confusion throughout though which is intentional i know – that Abby’s compliment keeps getting called Anna – and it’s only in the last statement in this first installment that we find out why – and i guess the intention is to make it a cliff-hanger which it does, but now i’m also confused.

So – all in all, i’d say that the shell is a good one – i’m into it, i’m just not sure what i’m supposed to think genre wise so i’m a bit all over the place.  Oh well – decent enough to read though if you guys are interested in something new that’s YA, Dystopian / Sci-fi.