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Chapter-by-chapter review on .

You cannot be serious. Read that synopsis. Just read it. Six zones, each named after a character trait. (And yes, characters are reduced to a single character trait related to their zone). Does this sound familiar? Well, that's the book in a nutshell.

Those zones, and the system that oppresses the people, exist because a revolt was struck down a hundred years ago. Does this sound familiar?

People are sorted into these zones by a hat. Does this sound familiar?

The protagonist, Kalenna, is sorted into the "selfless" zone. Does this—well, okay, strictly speaking it's more of a reverse Tris here. Still, she shows no signs of being altruistic in any way, making it an informed trait, and she displays the traits of other zones as well. Does this sound familiar?

Kalenna goes through initiation after being sorted, and most of the focus is given to her combat training (thought she actually does get other classes, too). Does this sound familiar?

Kalenna doesn't actually do anything to figure stuff out, yet ends up in the middle of the intrigue. Well, what little there is of it. Does this sound familiar?

Oh, but it doesn't stop there!

No, see, this book isn't just content with ripping off other books (with Divergent as the obvious biggest source of inspiration, which, if you go and read my review of that, you'll know that's already a bad start). It also fails to understand what makes a book work.

The world building is nonsensical. It goes back and forth between claiming that the government manipulated and forced people. Either way, people are now wearing bands that count their karma points, and once you run out, you're dead. Yeah, somehow I'm supposed to think a country lasted a hundred years while forcing its people to wear what is essentially a gun pointed at their head. And there isn't any guideline to how many points a crime costs you! The love interest's dark and troubled past is that his dad was killed after losing 62 out of a hundred points for standing up to thugs (who may or may not have been government agents). That…does not work.

Worse, Kalenna doesn't feel like she grew up in that world. I feel like the author saw the Divergent world and said "but Tris isn't aware of how sucky it is and that's bad", without realizing that that's not how totalitarian governments work. I quoted Yeon-mi Park during my snark of the book, and I stand by that: such a government cannot work if even the thought of insurrection is viewed as conceivable. Kalenna? She gleefully considers bringing down the government without even being prompted to do so. She just looked at the place and said "this sucks; I'll change the world". Oh, and she defies the guy in charge of the training center like it's no big deal. She's a teenager of our world who was sucked into the book, and I refuse to believe it.

She also completely lacks a character arc. She starts out seeing the world as it really is (fucked-up) and wanting to change it. She ends the book…resolving to do just that. That's literally the last sentence of the book. No movement, no evolution.

And of course, the common Mary Sue traits are all there. She's pretty! She's capable of fighting (unnaturally so, becoming an expert in two days of training), because "strong independent women" are in vogue, but when winning a fight might actually be relevant for the plot (earning her a chance to visit her mom, who knows about the Big Deal Conspiracy that her dad unveiled ten years ago), she loses, and her love interest has to hand her the prize instead. She befriends three boys within five minutes of meeting them and they're all the best at what they do! She doesn't associate with girls, though, even if she wished she did, so you know she totally doesn't have internalized misogyny (spoiler alert: she does. Not as much as Tris, but she does).

But enough about Kalenna. The plot? A mess, and in the end, barely existent anyway. We start with many plotlines that all converge by the power of contrivance:
*A black box full of her missing dad's mementos. Her dad totally uncovered a conspiracy, and the box is important. But Kalenna's mom won't tell her why, because then what little mystery there is is spoiled.
*"Suspicious" stuff happening at HQ. That's just an excuse for the protagonists to start investigating the government. Which they don't do anyway, and instead wait until Kalenna's Mary Sue black hole brings in the intel straight to them.
*A foreign spy, who's totally not Justine, Kalenna's roommate who is literally introduced by Kalenna going "are you from here" because of her accent. This is also a red herring—at least so far. It might come up in a sequel.
*A tournament to get Kalenna to talk to mom (which, again, she loses to her love interests who then hands her the prize). This is the only part where I felt like the book was interested in what it was telling us, and even then it ranged from terrible to mediocre.
Everything is basically solved by chapter seventeen out of nineteen, and the book then stutters to an end by confirming that the love interests totally are love interests, having Kalenna act like a bratty teenager towards the warden again and then her deciding to change the world without any real prompt to do so. A climax? What's that?

The rest of the cast is Gavin, the love interest who's perfect than even Kalenna is. He's also in Altruistic, though why is still a mystery to me. He has a dark past because his dad's dead and he resents the government for it. Also he's the best fighter with a staff because contrivances.

The rest are linear. Jericho is the strong guy who's infatuated with a girl solely because she can kick his ass, except she totally can't because womenfolk are just inferior, lmao. Ivan is the resident smart guy, and this book is really unlucky to have chosen computers as his area of expertise because they're my area of expertise and I can say for a fact that Ivan (and thus, the book) doesn't understand a thing about computers. Jasmine is said kickass girl, who's described and set up as a badass yet loses the one fight she's in (against Jericho). Trace is the rival/bully/Mean Girl archetype (except he's male), and the book completely forgets about him about two thirds of the way, in the middle of the tournament. Seriously, Kalenna opens the tournament thinking she hopes she can kick his ass, and then the book doesn't even mention him losing his fight, but he never faces her.

Out of the factions zones, the book despises Radiant and Astute, the beautiful and the smart. The former are all Mean Girls archetypes, and literally every single one of them who gets speaking lines is dismissed by Kalenna as "beautiful on the outside but ugly on the inside", because she's deep like that. The Astute are the smart guys, and the book hates them because intelligence apparently precludes an ability to fight and being able to beat people up with a staff is all that matters in life.

I could conclude this review. Or I could imitate the book and end it here after vowing to destroy all terrible books. Nothing changed, since that's what I've been doing for nearly two years now. A perfect waste of time.