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Book Review: ‘Revolution 19’ by Gregg Rosenblum

Gabrielle Bondi

revolution 19When I read that Revolution 19 was part of a collaboration that included a Homeland producer (a show I’m unequivocally obsessed with), I picked up the book right away and started reading. With less than 300 pages, Revolution 19 was a quick read. Usually I appreciate fast-read novels, but in this case, it was a hindrance. Revolution 19 lacks some serious substance, especially in character development and world-building.

Revolution 19 follows Nick, Kevin and Cass, teenage siblings hiding in the wilderness community of survivors. Years ago, robots created by humans turned against them and started to pretty much enslave man. Those humans living on the outside of the robot-controlled cities were people who were able to escape enslavement. But one day, the robots found them, intent to kill or take them all. Nick, Cass and Kevin manage to escape in time, but instead of finding a new place to settle, they go on a mission to rescue their parents.

The story is like a mesh of Wall-E and The Terminator. To be honest, I had to rely those movies to get an idea of how this futuristic, robotic world was like. There is hardly any world-building in the novel. The author just assumes that you “get” it. The robots turned on their creators and are now manipulating them. That’s it. Accept it. The problem was that I couldn’t accept! I had so many questions, but the main one was: How did these robots gain a conscious? The story raises this question for two seconds and then leaves you hanging. (It’s something you might find out in a sequel.)

As for the characters, they’re typical and hardly dynamic. Nick is the older, brave brother, willing to sacrifice himself for his younger siblings. Kevin is the youngest; no one really takes him seriously, but he’s a major tech nerd and spends practically all his time thinking about technology and mechanics. Cass is a very talented athlete and artist, and that’s really all I know about her. Cass’ character is the most infuriating, not because of her, but because she’s severely under-developed. She’s part of the main trio; her placement in this story was mostly as a convenience to the other characters. In addition, the cover of the book has a girl on it; this is confusing and misleading.

The one good thing about Revolution 19 is that it’s action-packed. There’s always something happening, which makes it easy to read and follow. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised by all this since the book was written to later be a film. (Kind of like how I Am Number Four was.) Still, I had hoped that a cool and original robot-apocalypse story would’ve come out of this. Revolution 19 started with an interesting premise, but unfortunately failed to do much with it.

Rating: 4.5/10 stars

Revolution 19 is now available wherever books are sold. Support The Young Folks and purchase the book at our TYF Store, powered by Amazon.

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