United By Pop received a free copy of I Am Traitor in exchange for an honest review, all opinions are our own.
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Title: I Am Traitor
Author: Sif Sigmarsdóttir
Purchase: Available in the UK and the US
Overall rating: 3/5
Great for: Fans of H. G. Wells, Suzanne Collins, and Rick Yancey
Themes: Young adult, science fiction and dystopian
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Review:
Living isn’t just breathing. Living is experiencing, enjoying, having fun just for the hell of it. You shouldn’t just live life, you should feel life. You should feel all its different dimensions; you should feel happiness, sadness, elation, grief. Love.
Amy Sullivan is your average fourteen-year-old girl. Her priorities are chilling with her friends, both online and in real life. That is until she unwittingly becomes the central component in saving the entire teenage population, after an alien invasion plagues the planet.
The visitors, as they’ve become euphemistically known, arrive in their spaceships with tubes hovered over the world’s populace, ready to pluck whoever they desire from their ordinary existence and into their lair above. The world is left to wonder what is happening over their heads and await to see who is next to be taken. It is only the elusive resistance who seem to be willing to do anything about it. And when Amy joins forces with them, it is only this movement that has any hopes of reclaiming their planet.
The title dramatically comes into realisation when Amy realises the plan that she has figure-headed may not be as she first thought. She begins to question everything about her life, and the predicament her planet finds herself in, and eventually comes to realise the future of her race really does lie in her hands, but perhaps not as she first imaged it might…
‘I Am Traitor’ echoes both the infamous ‘War of the Worlds‘ by H. G. Wells, as well as more recent popular dystopian fiction. The harsh governmental regime foster feelings of inadequacy in individuals and a pack mentality when in groups. This brutality brings to mind aspects from powerhouses in this genre and it is easy to see ‘I Am Traitor’ following their notoriety.
This is a novel billed as a “modern-day War of the Worlds” and it really does deliver on that front. There was also a heavy degree of romance added into this science fiction plot, which I found a little overwhelming at times but definitely a nice reprieve from the action. I’m someone who prefers her fantasy and sci-fi with a minimum of romantic sub-plot but it worked here within the confines of the novel, although not strictly to my personal tastes.
The alien invasion theme is something I have read little about but one I’m definitely eager to explore more of after reading this book. This creates the fictional race accurately and gave them fully-rounded personalities and histories that aided in making the entire situation scarily believable. Sigmarsdóttir’s human population is also just as believable and I couldn’t help but root for the entire cast from the first introduction.
These beauties just came in: The #iamtraitor bookmarks! ❤️ Sign up for my newsletter and I'll mail you one. #bookgiveaway #bookmarks pic.twitter.com/JJM5be7tYO
— Sif Sigmarsdóttir (@sifsigmars) September 29, 2017
