【 DEVIATE 】
book #2 in the Lifelike series

Genre: Sci-Fi (dystopian)
Audience: Young Adult
Author: Jay Kristoff
Published: June 2019
Publisher: HarperVoyager
Pages: 422 (paperback)

I have mixed feelings about this one – it wasn’t quite as pacey as the first one, but I also took a long time to read it, so maybe it was more to do with that.

While I enjoyed the novelty of the world (and the crazy slang that takes a while to get your head back into), ultimately this did feel like a lot of effort to keep returning to. It started to feel a little like pushing to finish the book and I do feel like the story arc within this instalment became stale/cyclic, as the ending made me feel a bit like, oh, did we need the 100 pages or so in the middle to pad these events out so much?

Bottom line is that I will continue and finish the series, but I’m hoping that this is just suffering from second-book syndrome, and that everything will be much more consistently engaging in the last book.

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Title: Deviate
Series: Lifelike
Author: Jay Kristoff
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Lemon Fresh has seen better days.

After the climactic battle in Babel, she finds herself separated from Ezekiel and Cricket in the wastelands. Lemon’s abilities to manipulate electricity mark her as a deviate, and deadly corporate operatives are hunting her to use as a weapon in the war between BioMaas Incorporated and Daedelus Technologies. Instead, Lemon finds herself falling in with a group of fellow deviates—a band of teenagers with astonishing abilities, led by an enigmatic figure known as the Major, who may hold the secrets to Lemon’s past.

Meanwhile, Cricket finds himself in possession of the puritanical Brotherhood, a religious cult set for a head-on collision with the Major and his band. Searching for Lemon, Ezekiel finds a strange ally in an old enemy, and uncovers a plot that may see him reunited with his beloved Ana.

And inside Babel, a remade Eve hatches a plan to bring an end to the world.