Close

#BookReview: Ascend (The Cure 3)

Author: K.A. Riley

Ascend is the third book in The Cure book series by K. A. Riley. In the first two parts (part 1, and part 2), we learnt of the Directorate that locked people who could afford it into a luxurious world called the Arc. The reason was the disease called the Blight, which turned out to be biological warfare for which there is no cure, but there is an antidote, which makes people who take it sterile. As a result, the Directorate made a deal with the Bastille, a community that exists outside of the Arc but has not been destroyed like other communities, to give children to self-proclaimed aristocrats of the Arc. Ashen Spencer fought the Directorate and managed to escape in both books, and then in the third book, you think she will stop it, but there is some more yo-yo. In this third book, Ascend, Ashen escapes again and goes back to the Consortium after the evil Dutchess makes her fight Finn at the end of book 2. They look for other members of the Consortium and travel to Santa Fe to find other members, and we learn in this book that, the Arc where Ashen originally went and fought against is actually in what used to be Colorado.

The trip to Santa Fe is successful and the Consortium members find old allies and start to strategise how to win against the Directorate. But these conversations and strategies are not portrayed well and lack depth and detail plus there is lots of naivety in their plans. The plan somehow succeeds and when the Directorate attacks them, again they all manage to survive but this is written poorly. Ash also, again, goes back to the Arc so this just does not end. She keeps escaping and then going back, for various reasons, and she always manages to survive. Right!

Whilst I enjoyed the first two books – with the first one being the best, the Ascend part lacks details and depth, particularly with Santa Fe conversations and strategies on winning against the Directorate. The third part also lacks the focus on dystopia and becomes just fighting. In addition to that, there is soppiness about Ash and Finn, which turns into an unnecessarily prolonged story of Finn’s nanotechnology changing his personality, so Ash worries and acts ridiculously several times and risks her life. Plus, their conversations are really bad. I know the book is sci-fi, but this amount of irrational and annoying behaviour would always face consequences. I really did not like the excessiveness of Finn’s condition nor the lack of exploration of the details of what happened to him, how visions that gave him personality change actually work, and we really did not need him to get magic powers and draw shimmering walls and shields to protect Ash when she makes irrational decisions, which would get her killed in any other story. I can totally see how the author, who somehow wanted to portray Ash annoyingly, needed to save the story and invent Finn’s magic powers, but it really did not read well.  

I do hope the book series will come around and get back to sci-fi and proper dystopia and that all this irrationality and soppiness will go away because I really do not enjoy writing bad reviews.

Thank you for reading!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *