REBOOT by Amy Tintera

I decided to read Reboot by Amy Tintera because:

1)  It sounded crazy good!  A world where people reboot after death, becoming stronger, faster and all-around bada**?  I'm in J.

2)  It's sci-fi YA--which is really popular right now.  Since this isn't one of my main genres, I'm looking to find the best there is.

3)  It's a debut that can count toward my DAC challenge reads.

Then there's this:  The perfect soldier is done taking orders.  Yes, yes, yes!!  I love it when an MC stands up for herself and starts kicking butt--especially when it's an MC I like as much as I liked Wren 178.

The 178 tells us the number of minutes she was dead before rebooting.  The higher the number, the less humanity (or so they say).  When a new batch of reboots comes in and Wren has to choose her new trainee, everyone expects her to go with the highest number, the best.  But instead she chooses Callum Reyes, a measly 22.  With his constant smile, great sense of humor, and the fearless way he meets Wren's eyes, you'd think the kid was still human.  Being dead only 22 minutes before rebooting, he almost is human.

And he brings out the humanity in Wren.

I loved the scene where she shocked everyone--herself included--and picked Callum.  It was awesome.

Ever, another reboot and Wren's BFF, was a great side character.  Like Callum, Ever was inherently likable and sympathetic.  The scenes with her showed us why HARC was so evil.  Watching Ever lose herself, seeing her humanity slip away b/c of the drugs HARC was administering, was so incredibly sad.  But I loved that she didn't go down without a fight.  The scene where Ever chooses not to give in, to fight back, was tragic but also very well done.  A great turning point for Wren.

This book reminded me of a lot of different books.  The "government's best soldier goes rogue" concept reminded me of Marie Lu's Legend.  The zombie bent made me think of Mayberry's Rot and Ruin.  The mentor/student relationship definitely reminded me of Armentrout's Half-Blood and Mead's Vampire Academy and Wolff's Isle of Night.  It also made me think of White's Paranormalcy and Roth's Divergent.

But what I liked was that while being relatable to all these books, Reboot was most definitely not the same.

 

For one, Tintera flipped the mentor/student thing on it's head.  Our heroine was the mentor, not the mentee.  Tintera gave our girl the power, and I loved that.  Wren 178 was tough, and she loved Callum 22 even if he was a subpar reboot who didn't want to kill people.  And I loved that!  Made me think of Katniss and Peeta actually lol.

I liked Reboot a lot.  Besides all of the reasons mentioned above, it had a very satisfying ending, which is somewhat rare in book 1 of a series J.

Happy reading,

Ninja Girl