A Story Unwinded

By Jaime K

          

      Unwholly is the second book in the Unwind trilogy. Neal Shusterman gives us a look into a future where technology is advanced and the consequences are grim. It is a future after a second civil war. The war against pro life and pro choice. The two groups decided on a compromise. Between the ages of thirteen to eighteen parents can sign up to have their child unwound, a procedure in which the person is divided to donate their parts to people in need.

      This series follows different people with different plotlines throughout the book, often all coming together at one point or another. It is in third person point of view, however the character being followed in that part is stated next to the part number. We get a look into only this character's thoughts, similar to a first person point of view. This book has three important plot lines, Cam, Connor and Starkey.   

      The book's formatting, although quite different from most books I've seen, works very well for the story. Although it switches around very often from character to character, it is easy to keep track of each plot line. I think this book can tend to trail off a little too much at times. Occasionally in the first book, we would get an inside look at the story of a random character, giving us more insight on the future we're being shown. In this one, I feel as though that concept was overdone. There was simply too many side parts. Usually, the character we were shown would be someone the main characters had direct contact with at some point, but in this book the author seems to have side stories that come from other side stories when finally you have random characters that don't even exist as far as the main characters are concerned. It's like a branch coming directly from the tree trunk, then having a smaller branch grow on that branch, then have another grow on the smaller one. To put it shortly, I think the story should have focused more on the main characters as opposed to trailing off so much.

      As for the main plots themselves, they are very well constructed. I enjoy the fact that what the main characters do earlier on effect or even foreshadow what has yet to come. It is very telling when an author possesses this skill, you can tell the story was very well thought out before it even began. Something I also enjoy about both this book and the previous book in the series is how different the three main plots are from each other. It helps to show the readers different aspects of the future these characters live in. It also is enjoyable watching characters from so many different walks of life come together, sometimes not sharing the same opinions on this new system.

      I would definitely recommend this book to other readers. Not only is it fascinating but in some bizarre way it almost feels realistic. It makes you sit and wonder. Would we do this if we had the technology to? With the abortion debate being such a big deal these days, it may not be far from the truth. It also plays with the idea of morals. When a teen is in the divided state, all their parts are technically still alive, so it is considered ethical for them to be surgically torn apart because they aren't dead, the just live in a divided state. The teens in the book disagree, but most adults do agree. What would you think? Definitely look for this trilogy, it is a very interesting tale with many layers to it's plot.