Title: Unwholly
Author: Neal Shusterman
Publisher/Year:  Simon & Schuster 10/15/13
Length:   406 Pages
Series:  Unwind Trilogy #2

Overview

Rife with action and suspense, this riveting companion to the perennially popular Unwindchallenges assumptions about where life begins and ends—and what it means to live.

Thanks to Connor, Lev, and Risa—and their high-profile revolt at Happy Jack Harvest Camp—people can no longer turn a blind eye to unwinding. Ridding society of troublesome teens while simltaneously providing much-needed organs for transplanting might be convenient, but its morality has finally been brought into question. However, unwinding has become big business, and there are powerful political and corporate interests that want to see it not only continue, but also expand to the unwinding of prisoners and the impoverished.

Cam is made entirely out of the parts of other unwinds; he is a teen who does not technically exist. A futuristic Frankenstein, Cam struggles to find identity and meaning and wonders if a rewound being can have a soul. And when the actions of a sadistic bounty hunter cause Cam’s fate to become inextricably bound with the fates of Connor, Risa, and Lev, he’ll have to question humanity itself.

My Thoughts

This is an interesting series – where you’re not quite sure where you going to find another twist and turn to get through.  What’s really interesting about this series is that there’s so much alluding to history here, that it takes us back to fully get a documentation of how things came to pass which makes it seem so much more real.  That’s something that we do’t often get in stories like this.

Throughout this 2nd installment, we are being told the story through a different vantage point in each chapter.  We get a new character telling us about what’s going on in their lives at that moment and it weaves into a much more complex story.

Connor and Risa are at the Graveyard – trying to make things continue as they are, but when newcomers come to the group, the dynamic gets tense.  On top of that, there are things that Connor learns along the way to make him question why they are able to be there without being bothered, yet why they aren’t getting the help that they were promised.  Risa on the other hand has learned to cope with being in a wheelchair but what she hasn’t been able to cope with is that connor doesn’t seem to have the time for her anymore.

Then there’s Lev – he’s definitely an interesting fellow – the journey that he’s been on and where he finds himself in this installment is no different in the interesting factor.  He is shuffled from locale to locale, revered and then hated – so you kind of have to feel bad for the guy, especially when you remember that he’s 14 years old.

Then there’s the introduction of Cam – a boy made entirely of unwinds – with all the best parts of the best candidates, and it’s really interesting to see what that makes him into and what the world’s reaction is of him.  it’s not good – know that.

As i said, each chapter is from the view point of someone else, so there are quite a few people that i haven’t mentioned.  They are the ones that bring even more uncertainty to everyone that we know, and even those that we’re not sure of yet.

Where we net out at the end of this 2nd full book is that they are looking for a specific man, one who’s identity seems to have been wiped out, but one who clearly had a huge hand in the world that they live in.  With that, Connor and Lev set out to really find out what happened and where things went wrong in the hopes of getting society back to where it should be – happy and safe for everyone.  So….onto the finale!