The Center

Author: loveableletters
Reviewer: LadyInLostYearn

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SYNOPSIS

Is survival worth dying for?
The Earth is scorched and what remains of civilization now operates under the strict leadership of New Pangaea, a single nation with one goal: survive.
For Salem, teenaged outcast living in the desert streets of the impoverished Outer City, survival requires much more than it implies; the Pangaean Republic is offering a once-a-decade opportunity to join the ranks of the Inner City, a society luxurious in comparison to its surrounding district. But when apocalypse strikes the wealthy members of this exclusive society, it becomes clear to Salem that nowhere is safe.

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Disclaimer: While I was reading your book with my best effort to stay unbiased, I might not catch your intended style for your characters, storyline, or purposes. By the end of the day, you control its narrative. I was just passing through, exploring around, and giving a deduction.

Overall review:

Good colours for cover, though maybe add features that emphasise the model on it. Honestly, I couldn't make out anything from the cover. The title didn't help either. But the blurb hooked me in, despite there's a couple of grammar mistakes. It was straightforward but didn't feel cliche.

Great environmental and sensation descriptions! You provided enough details, and yet they didn't feel flowery or hollow. But you also over-described things that can be simple, like "gradual death of nerve cells" and "blazing fever slicing across" (which can be "fever blazing across"), and they felt dragging. It's okay to be concise at some points. Every time I read books in here, I don't care about character aesthetics. I focus on whether the writer could deliver main characters' appearances by words. You described them and scattered them throughout the chapters, and I found it refreshing. But they still weren't enough, so solidify them. Unless they're purposefully and supposedly vague.

I sensed the worldbuilding that you wanted to show was placed in between dialogues, just so you could avoid infodumping. To me, this didn't work. It made me forget that there were ongoing interactions since the info was a lot to take in. I suggest you show this worldbuilding and its history along the way or little by little. Yes, there are people who want it right off the bat in the first few chapters, but I think it's rewarding to carry the readers along the journey of Salem and the way it references the world's system, instead of telling the readers its history only.

I noticed you put a lot of commas to facilitate the sentences, even when you can actually move the certain words or just leave them bare. This made the flow a little awkward. Like "I drifted to the outskirts of our village, he said, and only" could be "He said that I drifted to the outskirts" and "Once, after several months" could be "After several months of nameless solitude, I once stealthily..." There were certain words omitted that didn't help the flow too. Like this bit, "I often found myself slouching when around him..." It could be "slouching when I'm around him..." There are grammar mistakes, like our should be us in "comment about our being friends" and "Police brutality" should have its letter P lowercase. Having Grammarly (don't fully depend on it) and ProWritingAid should help. Easy on the adverbs because there were so many -ly words.

The dialogues and the body expressions definitely helped in showing more depth of these characters since internal monologues took up space. Salem's voice was strong and it should stay that way. I truly hope, with the story's own pace, that the characters will develop more in future chapters. The plot isn't using the usual dystopian trend, and I'd like to read more. I'll wait for this to finish and binge read.

I'd even recommend this for certain booklists.