Book one of the Pure Trilogy.
First Line: "Pressia is lying in the cabinet."
Comments: The story in Pure by Julianna Baggott is about fairness and discovering who you are. The characters fight to survive in a world where everyone is their enemy, surrounded by inequality and unfair circumstances. The story relates to my life because throughout the story the characters are learning about themselves – what they’re willing to do for the greater good or the ones they love and what they aren’t willing to do – something everyone goes through. People are sometimes surprised by their own actions. I can see this in the story.
Pure shows a sharp contrast between the lives of the people outside the Dome and lives of the people inside. Outside is desolation and ruin, warped and twisted bodies, and an atmosphere of constant fear and kill-or-be-killed. Inside is organization and cleanliness, impossibly perfect and healthy bodies, and ignorance – and where there is not ignorance, there is a sense of superiority. This clear divide between social levels is inaccurate in depicting the real world. It’s true that there are different groups within the two classes: militia members and citizens outside, students and super-soldiers inside. But even so, I disagree with the simplified idea of good and bad, black and white, and right and wrong. Characters Lyda and Partridge are examples of the gray that is so present in real society because they come from the privileged and sinister Dome but care about what’d going on outside. It’s possible that the sharp contrasts in this story were exaggerated purposefully for simplicity, but it doesn’t make sense to me that anything can be so decisively divided when it comes to humans.
The story was heavy on the ideas of family, the bonds between family members, and finding out where you come from and how that affects who you are. But I think there was too much emphasize on this. The idea of family was romanticized in this story in a way that made it feel unrealistic. Main character Pressia and Partridge shared some kind of bond because they shared the same mother, while in reality being related to someone means absolutely nothing beyond genetics and legalities. Neither really knew their mother but both were obsessed with the idea of finding her. This is more easily understandable, but the strength of their bond with her seemed incongruent with how much they actually knew about her. The story didn’t match up with my views on family.
I did like that the story casually included characters of different races. By this I mean that some characters were not white (Pressia was Japanese) but their non-Caucasian backgrounds were not stressed dramatically. Race wasn’t a big deal in the story but different races were present. That’s important in today’s society because characters should represent all different nationalities but shouldn’t necessarily make a big deal of the fact that they’re different.
Pressia felt like a recycled character in this story. I do appreciate the strong female lead, but she felt like a mix of Katniss Everdeen and a handful of other fantasy female teenagers. Strong, yes – brazenly so, always ready to prove her merit and toughness. Stubborn, willful, and not willing to open up initially. But as the story goes on, she softens and starts becoming protective of other people and the readers can see that she’s just a really cool person over all. Pressia seemed modeled after what’s becoming a generic “strong” female lead and I didn’t care for her because she didn’t feel like her own person.
The story left many questions unanswered. For one, the big picture of the dystopian world was never explained. The plot only covered a small area, so what about the rest of the world? It’s true that in the post apocalyptic world, communication between cities would be nearly nonexistent. However, the characters don’t seem to think much beyond their own little worlds. Nothing much was said about the organization in the Dome either – I got the sense that it was supposed to be much bigger than what we actually saw from Partridge’s perspective.
Overall, the story was confusing. I felt many details were unclear, like the situation with the militia being different from whomever the Dome sends out. I was never sure who was affiliated with whom or what was really going on. Maybe this was meant to show the uncertainty of the characters’ world, but regardless it made the story hard to follow. In addition, the ending felt predictable and forced. I am not at all interested in reading the sequels to this book because I didn't enjoy any of the characters and the ending was disappointingly predictable.
Pure shows a sharp contrast between the lives of the people outside the Dome and lives of the people inside. Outside is desolation and ruin, warped and twisted bodies, and an atmosphere of constant fear and kill-or-be-killed. Inside is organization and cleanliness, impossibly perfect and healthy bodies, and ignorance – and where there is not ignorance, there is a sense of superiority. This clear divide between social levels is inaccurate in depicting the real world. It’s true that there are different groups within the two classes: militia members and citizens outside, students and super-soldiers inside. But even so, I disagree with the simplified idea of good and bad, black and white, and right and wrong. Characters Lyda and Partridge are examples of the gray that is so present in real society because they come from the privileged and sinister Dome but care about what’d going on outside. It’s possible that the sharp contrasts in this story were exaggerated purposefully for simplicity, but it doesn’t make sense to me that anything can be so decisively divided when it comes to humans.
The story was heavy on the ideas of family, the bonds between family members, and finding out where you come from and how that affects who you are. But I think there was too much emphasize on this. The idea of family was romanticized in this story in a way that made it feel unrealistic. Main character Pressia and Partridge shared some kind of bond because they shared the same mother, while in reality being related to someone means absolutely nothing beyond genetics and legalities. Neither really knew their mother but both were obsessed with the idea of finding her. This is more easily understandable, but the strength of their bond with her seemed incongruent with how much they actually knew about her. The story didn’t match up with my views on family.
I did like that the story casually included characters of different races. By this I mean that some characters were not white (Pressia was Japanese) but their non-Caucasian backgrounds were not stressed dramatically. Race wasn’t a big deal in the story but different races were present. That’s important in today’s society because characters should represent all different nationalities but shouldn’t necessarily make a big deal of the fact that they’re different.
Pressia felt like a recycled character in this story. I do appreciate the strong female lead, but she felt like a mix of Katniss Everdeen and a handful of other fantasy female teenagers. Strong, yes – brazenly so, always ready to prove her merit and toughness. Stubborn, willful, and not willing to open up initially. But as the story goes on, she softens and starts becoming protective of other people and the readers can see that she’s just a really cool person over all. Pressia seemed modeled after what’s becoming a generic “strong” female lead and I didn’t care for her because she didn’t feel like her own person.
The story left many questions unanswered. For one, the big picture of the dystopian world was never explained. The plot only covered a small area, so what about the rest of the world? It’s true that in the post apocalyptic world, communication between cities would be nearly nonexistent. However, the characters don’t seem to think much beyond their own little worlds. Nothing much was said about the organization in the Dome either – I got the sense that it was supposed to be much bigger than what we actually saw from Partridge’s perspective.
Overall, the story was confusing. I felt many details were unclear, like the situation with the militia being different from whomever the Dome sends out. I was never sure who was affiliated with whom or what was really going on. Maybe this was meant to show the uncertainty of the characters’ world, but regardless it made the story hard to follow. In addition, the ending felt predictable and forced. I am not at all interested in reading the sequels to this book because I didn't enjoy any of the characters and the ending was disappointingly predictable.
Rating: I rate Pure a six out of ten.
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