Review | 'BZRK'

BZRK 
Michael Grant
390 pg., U.S. hardcover
Egmont USA
4 stars | B



From Goodreads:

Love The Hunger Games?  Action-adventure thrillers with a dystopian twist? BZRK (Berserk) by Michael Grant, New York Times best-selling author of the GONE series, ramps up the action and suspense to a whole new level of excitement.
 
Set in the near future, BZRK is the story of a war for control of the human mind.  Charles and Benjamin Armstrong, conjoined twins and owners of the Armstrong Fancy Gifts Corporation, have a goal:  to turn the world into their vision of utopia.  No wars, no conflict, no hunger.  And no free will.  Opposing them is a guerrilla group of teens, code name BZRK, who are fighting to protect the right to be messed up, to be human.  This is no ordinary war, though.  Weapons are deployed on the nano-level. The battleground is the human brain.  And there are no stalemates here:  It’s victory . . . or madness.
 
BZRK unfolds with hurricane force around core themes of conspiracy and mystery, insanity and changing realities, engagement and empowerment, and the larger impact of personal choice. Which side would you choose?  How far would you go to win?


In March of 2011, Isaac Knopf (Footy Chronicles, The Distributor) and I interviewed Michael Grant, New York Times-bestselling author of the Gone series, and we asked him about one of this then-upcoming novels, BZRK to which he said he couldn't say much. A year later, the novel was released, and three months after that, I'm finally reading it. And, of course you know this, here's my review.
Kicking right off with the writing of the novel, the reason I didn't give this book five stars that it obviously deserves since Michael's worked so hard on it is because the writing was very much so different than the Gone series, which threw me off quite a bit. The first hundred-200 pages were very gripping and easy-to-follow if you were paying attention, but once I passed the 200-page mark, things started to become too fast-paced and complex, and those two things don't go hand-in-hand. I was getting pretty impatient and irritated with the pacing of the story, and it really--in my opinion--should have been slowed down just a notch, but what does my opinion matter? I also didn't really like the heavy usages of sexuality and profanity. Listen, I love the crap of Michael Grant and his books, but I think a sense of credibility and realism are taken away with this adult-related aspect to his books. Sure, in the fifth Gone book, Fear, *spoiler* multiple couples have sex and almost all characters cuss, but this novel wasn't afraid to make somewhat objective comments about the opposite sex, and drop an f-bomb. I mean it didn't really bug me personally, but I'm sure it will bug some readers, as well as starting to get redundant and overused.
The number one thing that this book has going is its plot. The story is about two different organisations (BZRK and the Armstrong family) and their respective goals and ways of going about said goals. The story revolves around Sadie and Noah, who are given pseudonyms in order to become apart of BZRK. The Armstrong family's objective is to create a utopia, but BZRK's goal is to avoid that route and live free lives, for the utopia that the Armstrongs want to build could be perceived as more of a dystopia. The plot had a very interesting arc, and while it wasn't entirely strong, it was very grabbing. The book kicks off with a jet crashing into a stadium, which sparks the attention of BZRK towards Sadie. We follow the plot through many characters, not unlike Grant's Gone books, and it does get quite hard to keep up with, so I definitely recommend reading the book slowly. I also recommend, obviously, reading with caution for profanity and sexual references and aspects. So overall with the plot, it isn't very moving or strong, but it is interesting and so eerily realistic, in a sense.
Topping off the review is, as usual, discussion on the novel's character development and arcs. I didn't really feel emotionally connected to any of the characters at all, but perhaps that's simply because this is because this book is the first in a series. I think a lot of the characters were very similar as far as voice, motivations, and development go. The thing with books with multiple perspectives is that it's very hard to have ample character development, and I think BZRK both proved that wrong and also sort of, sort of, sort of, succumbed to it. I think Sadie did change a bit, and I don't really know all that much about Noah changing, I'll have to go back through and reread his introductory scene(s). So...yeah. The characters in this book were neither lovable nor hate-worthy, so I think--on a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being amazing)--the character development in BZRK falls in at a 6 or 7, which is still pretty good, especially considering the circumstances of the novel.
All in all, the book was better than I thought it would be, and I read it within a 24-hour period. It's a very complex, intricate, fascinating read that definitely appeals to fans of technological stories involving scientific developments and such. If you are a Gone fan, as I am (and a massive one at that), I do want to tell you not to go into this book expecting those books. I kind of made that mistake, and I regret it, and believe it altered my perception of the book. 


The sequel to BZRK, BZRK 2 (as it's currently titled--whether it'll change or not is unbeknownst to me), is set to be released February 26, 2013.