#perigrine

my mom’s proud invention— cat littler nesting boxes! They’re: Portable! Light Weight! Cozy!

      Lately I’ve been trying to catch up on reading some classic books that I’ve never gotten around to before. Most recently I read Slaughterhouse-Five, which I did a review for as well, and while I didn’t hate it by any means it certainly wasn’t my favorite either,. So, as a bit of a palate-cleanser I returned to one of my favorites, Under the Never Sky by Veronica Rossi. Under the Never Sky is the first installment of her Under the Never Sky Series and I will review each book from the series separately because they each have their own strengths and weaknesses.

      The two protagonists of Under the Never Sky are almost as opposite as two people can possibly be and the story is told alternately through their perspectives. Aria was born into a high tech society where people, called dwellers, live in pods which protect them from the outside environment and where they spend their days hanging out in virtual realm. Peregrine, who goes by Perry, is an outsider and resides on the exposed world where life is all too real. His days feature danger and his powerful senses as he hunts and defends his tribe from the dangerous creatures that roam the scarred planet.

      Their lives are brought together by a power that threatens both of their worlds, the aether. Aether is an electric force that resides in the sky and periodically strikes down in the form of aether storms that ravage the landscape, crops, villages, and pods alike. Aria and Perry’s initial meetings are problematic as they as their two worlds clash and manifest in mutual disdain. As time passes, they become begrudging allies as Perry goes in search of his nephew, Talon, who was taken by dwellers and Aria tries to make contact with her mother and get back into her home pod, Reverie. They of course face many challenges along the way. They incur the wrath of a cannibalistic Croven tribe, are hunted by wolves, and confront Aria’s painful change as she adapts to the outside world.

      Without giving any more of the actual story away, I’ll tell you that I thoroughly enjoy this book. Unlike other post apocalyptic stories that have flooded the book market in the last ten years, Under the Never Sky is believable. Rossi is so imaginative and thorough in her story development that everything flows in a way that needs little explaining, is dynamic, and above all plausible. The ever changing storyline is filled with little surprises that kept me engaged the whole way through, like their mishap with the Croven and the true nature of Talon’s kidnapping. I loved that I felt like I could follow what was happening in the book and had a basic idea of where the story was going but had no idea how it would get there. That kind of creativity and authenticity in a book is so rare and therefore made the book a very refreshing read.

      While  the originality of the storyline was invigorating, the constant clichés in the writing made the book difficult to get through at times. For instance: “Aria watched, mesmerized, as something roused deep within her, whirling and heading through her limbs, bringing her strength as fierce as the never sky,” (p.3549). I understand what Rossi was going for here, the heroine gathering her strength under the framework of the paralleled stormy sky; however, the passage is far more clichéd than  inspiring. This kind of weak writing is a reoccurring issue for Rossi. I honestly think that if she put as much creativity into how she writes as she does into her storyline this series would have been a work of art.