Title: Outside In
Author: Maria V Snyder
Publisher/Year: Harlequin 2/15/11
Length: 335
Series: Insider #2

Overview

Me?

A leader?

Okay, I did prove that there’s more to Inside than we knew.

That a whole world exists beyond this cube we live in. And finding that led to a major rebellion—between worker scrubs like me and the snobby uppers who rule our world. Make that ruled. Because of me, we’re free. I thought that meant I was off the hook, and could go off on my own again—while still touching base with Riley, of course. He’s the one upper I think I can trust. But then we learned that there’s outside and then there is Outside.

And something from Outside wants In.

My Thoughts

I love when we get a dystopian that’s a bit different from the others and this one is – at that.  While we get a lot of answers that were started from the first book of the series – there are still so many that are left unanswered.

When we left off from book 1, The ‘new rebellion’ had overthrown the Travas, they had established the Committee and the Uppers and Scrubs were now supposed to be working together.  Problem being of course that the Uppers felt like they didn’t have to work and the Scrubs felt like they shouldn’t have to continue to do EVERYTHING.   you can’t blame them right?

So, on top of all that, while Logan’s been trying to work through the network, there have been a series of problems – explosions, sabotage they’ve discovered, and they don’t know who’s responsible.  If that weren’t enough, the computer system has also been compromised – taken over by the Controllers – and when you learn who the Controllers are, you’ll find that it’s something that while semi-unexpected – it’s something quite expected.

The biggest bits to this story really are about trust and developing relationships.  I for one wanted to see something good happen for Riley and Trella, since they seem to be well suited for each other.  It’s never easy and after a few things happen, i think that there may ultimately be no hope for them.  Then there’s Trella and her ‘mom’ – she doesn’t want to go down the path of finding out for certain yet there’s really no reason to think otherwise.  There’s so much resentment there that i spend much of the book wondering what it’s going to take to get them on the same side.

Then there are all the others – Logan, Anne-Jade, Jacy, Hank and some newer folks.  You really don’t know who to trust, and when to trust them down the line.  That’s one of the great things about this story.  Just when you get comfortable thinking that they are going down the right path, catastrophe hits, and you realize that you’ve been trusting the wrong folks.

I don’t want to give anything away – but when we learn what’s driving the Controllers, all bets are off.  The questions that are left in my mind though are

1) what caused everyone to be put into the Cube

2) where are they going and why

3) since it’s so far away, will anyone survive?

Since i don’t think that there’s another installment to this series – these are all things that i’ll have to ponder which i’m fine with, it just would have been nice to have some of those answers.  anyhow – it was nice to find a new series like this and i hope that if you haven’t read it yet, that you pick it up.  Enjoy!