“Forgetting who you are is so much more complicated that simply forgetting your name. It’s also forgetting your dreams. Your aspirations. What makes you happy. What you pray you’ll never have to live without. It’s meeting yourself for the first time, and not being sure of your first impressions.” (8) There’s only one thing you can count on in a world without memories, and that’s your heart. The feelings that flood you, the warmth or the chill that envelopes you, that’s the only barometer you have when nothing else makes sense. Learning that you must let it guide you to those you can trust and those from whom you must flee is the most important lesson there is, and when you’re running for your life, it’s a lesson you must learn before it’s too late.
For a breathtakingly beautiful 16 year old young woman, the only person miraculously found alive amid the wreckage of a passenger airplane crash, her life before opening her eyes is a complete and utter blank. Without the things that seem most basic to our existence – a name, memories, and understanding of everyday items like a television – she is left at the mercy of those around her to determine who she is and where she came from. Adding to the mystery are the fact that her body was completely unharmed in the crash, her senses and strength are enhanced compared to others, she fluently speaks languages without realizing she’s doing it, and she can solve complicated mathematical problems with ease. There is obviously more to who (or what) she is and where she came from than simply a teenage girl on a flight from LAX to Tokyo.
Soon she’s confronted by a beautiful young man who claims to know her and who wants to save her. She’s also being followed by an older man with sad eyes and a shifty demeanor. It’s not long before menacing thugs appear out of nowhere and try to apprehend her and a conspiracy-theorist posting online offers her answers if she’ll agree to meet. She’s plagued by a menacing fear she can’t name, drawn to this young man by a pull that seems to come from deep within her, and clearly running out of time as danger surrounds her from every direction.
Leaving off at both a literal and a figurative cliff hanger, Jessica Brody‘s Unremembered, interlaces classic elements of techno-science fiction, fast-paced action adventure, psychological mystery, and romance like visionary scientists combining and recombining genes and DNA to solve the mysteries of human existence and craft our future in their labs. What mastermind scientist (I mean author) Brody creates is an intriguing plot where each answer just leads to more questions; a suspenseful, tension-fueled present tense narrative that races along at breakneck speed; and a young woman about whom there is definitely more than meets the violet-hued eye.
- Posted by Cori