The Unquiet by Mikaela EverettGenre: Science Fiction
Release Date: 22nd September 2015
Publisher: Greenwillow
Source: Publisher
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For most of her life, Lirael has been training to kill—and replace—a duplicate version of herself on a parallel Earth. She is the perfect sleeper-soldier. But she’s beginning to suspect she is not a good person.
The two Earths are identical in almost every way. Two copies of every city, every building, even every person. But the people from the second Earth know something their duplicates do not—two versions of the same thing cannot exist. They—and their whole planet—are slowly disappearing. Lira has been trained mercilessly since childhood to learn everything she can about her duplicate, to be a ruthless sleeper-assassin who kills that other Lirael and steps seamlessly into her life.
This was a weird book, man. Has anyone played Final Fantasy XIII? Remember that thing with the two planets? Yeah, The Unquiet is like that.
So there’s these two worlds inhabited by doppelgangers of each other (the book specifies that one planet holds doppelgangers while the other are the ~originals but really, how are you meant to know? Real questions being asked here at Books of Amber). One planet is like the five star planet in which the blissfully oblivious people live happily, totally unaware that their evil twins from the other planet have been training since they were children to kill them and take over their lives as part of a weird, convoluted attempt to stage a coup. Or something.
Anyway, the main character goes through this super regimented training camp thing, killing and maiming and generally being a child soldier before ~graduating and being sent to Five Star Land to kill and take over her good twin’s life. Main character suffers a crisis of conscience at some point because duh, she’s messing with innocent people and I think there is romance at some point? I don’t know, it was all very boring and dragged a lot.
I mean, for a book with as much potential to be creepy as this one did, The Unquiet just kind of limped on. There were some vaguely interesting subplots, such as Main Character’s kind of endearing relationship with Be-Wheelchaired Guy (no, I do not remember their names. No, I do not care enough to look them up) and her fake little sister getting under her skin but mostly, the main plot was kind of everywhere with none of the characters ever gripping me. I’m sure there are people out there who will like this weird little novel but sadly, I was not one of them.