Name: Beta (Beta # 1)
Author: Rachel CohnPublisher: Disney Hyperion
Release Date: October 16th, 2012
Format: ARC copy
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304 pages
Summary:
In a world constructed to absolute perfection, imperfection is difficult to understand—and impossible to hide.
Elysia is a clone, created in a laboratory, born as a sixteen year old girl, an empty vessel with no life experience to draw from. She is a Beta, an experimental model of teenaged clone. She was replicated from another teenage girl, who had to die in order for Elysia to be created.
Elysia's purpose is to serve the inhabitants of Demesne, an island paradise for the wealthiest people on earth. Everything about Demesne is bioengineered for perfection. Even the air there induces a strange, euphoric high that only the island's workers—soulless clones like Elysia—are immune to.
At first, Elysia's new life on this island paradise is idyllic and pampered. But she soon sees that Demesne's human residents, the most privileged people in the world who should want for nothing, yearn. And, she comes to realize that beneath its flawless exterior, there is an undercurrent of discontent amongst Demesne's worker clones. She knows she is soulless and cannot feel and should not care—so why are overpowering sensations clouding Elysia's mind?
If anyone discovers that Elysia isn't the unfeeling clone she must pretend to be, she will suffer a fate too terrible to imagine. When Elysia's one chance at happiness is ripped away from her with breathtaking cruelty, emotions she's always had but never understood are unleashed. As rage, terror, and desire threaten to overwhelm her, Elysia must find the will to survive.
In a world constructed to absolute perfection, imperfection is difficult to understand—and impossible to hide.
Elysia is a clone, created in a laboratory, born as a sixteen year old girl, an empty vessel with no life experience to draw from. She is a Beta, an experimental model of teenaged clone. She was replicated from another teenage girl, who had to die in order for Elysia to be created.
Elysia's purpose is to serve the inhabitants of Demesne, an island paradise for the wealthiest people on earth. Everything about Demesne is bioengineered for perfection. Even the air there induces a strange, euphoric high that only the island's workers—soulless clones like Elysia—are immune to.
At first, Elysia's new life on this island paradise is idyllic and pampered. But she soon sees that Demesne's human residents, the most privileged people in the world who should want for nothing, yearn. And, she comes to realize that beneath its flawless exterior, there is an undercurrent of discontent amongst Demesne's worker clones. She knows she is soulless and cannot feel and should not care—so why are overpowering sensations clouding Elysia's mind?
If anyone discovers that Elysia isn't the unfeeling clone she must pretend to be, she will suffer a fate too terrible to imagine. When Elysia's one chance at happiness is ripped away from her with breathtaking cruelty, emotions she's always had but never understood are unleashed. As rage, terror, and desire threaten to overwhelm her, Elysia must find the will to survive.
Goodreads
My Review:
I enjoyed reading this book very much and thought that the idea of creating unfeeling clones to service humans was certainly a new and unique one. When Elysia is first sold to the Bratton family as a replacement for their eldest daughter that moved away, she is happy to be with them. Having known no other way of life besides serving, Elysia politely and obediently does everything her adoptive family asks of her, most of which involves playing with her two new “siblings” Ivan and Liesel, and acting as her “mother’s” little toy doll to dress up and parade around town. However, when Elysia suddenly begins to realize that she is much less “unfeeling” than she should be, she understands that she must keep her defective nature, and her yearning to control her own life and desires, to herself unless she wants to be the next clone to die.
Elysia
is introduced to Ivan’s cute yet remote friend Tahir, and almost immediately
falls in love with him. The author may
have made her sudden love for the boring Tahir difficult to believe on purpose,
since as a clone she is not used to having such deep feelings and thus does not
know how to express her emotions, but either way their romance appeared more
like physical attraction rather than true love.
Yet, at any rate, Elysia still cannot stop thinking about Alex, the
lover that her clone, Zhara, had before she was killed. She knows that remembering anything about her
clone’s life, including her name and what her lover looked like, automatically marks
her as a Defect and will lead to her death, but she cannot stop thinking about
them, especially Alex.
The
Bratton family seems like a relatively normal, loving family at the beginning
of the book. However, as it progresses
and more about the family is uncovered, it becomes clear that they are slightly
evil and very disturbing. They treat
clones with the utmost disrespect, as though they are merely the playthings of
humans and should do their every bidding, since they have no feelings and were
made solely to work for and please the humans.
Yet, contrary to popular belief, many of the clones are actually developing
feelings and desires, which leads to brief mentions of a rebellion, which I
assume will be discussed in greater detail in the second book.
While most of the
clones were just so unfeeling that they were difficult to connect with, they
were also a great source of entertainment.
The clones have databases embedded in their brains that they use to look
up information that they don’t automatically know, but slang words and other phrases
are not included in their databases.
Therefore, it was quite comical watching Elysia as she tried to
communicate with the other kids her age, since she did not understand slang or
sarcasm much at all. There was also a
surprising cliffhanger at the end of the book that made me anxious to discover
what happens next. In general, I thought
that Beta was an interesting book and I can’t wait to read the next one!
My Rating:
Hmmmm. Hmmmm, this book seems interesting. Very....But there's something that seems a tad cliche about it. I can't quite put my finger on it. It feels as if it's been done before. I'd like to read it because of the horror type genre it seems to have with the evil family you say, I love that.
ReplyDeleteGreat review though! :D
Yeah, I'm not sure about this book. Your review does got me all excited to get a copy, but I'm just not that into the premise. :( I do hope that I will love it. So fingers crossed.
ReplyDeleteJ'adore Happy Endings
This sounds like a really interesting idea. I'll definitely be keeping my eyes out for this one.
ReplyDelete