Failsafe By Anela Dean ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
I’d forgotten how much I love a good adventure novel until I started reading Failsafe. The book follows a 17-year-old epileptic girl living in a dystopian future, Soleil, on her journey to save the world. Or at least try. She has some help in the form of a boy/robot named Echo. They set off on a journey to take down the big bad, an AI who goes by “The Interface.”
Just based on the premise I’m sure you can help how much fun this book was to read. I’m a sucker for dystopian YA with a little bit of romance thrown in, so this was basically my kryptonite. There were a few bumps in the story along the way, but for the most part, I’m happy with how everything played out. Some of the world building was a bit vague/confusing in the beginning to middle of the book, but I’m going to go ahead and say that was deliberate. For a long while, I had no idea what was going on and who exactly the enemy was. They kept talking about “The Interface” but literally not until the end of the book did I figure out what that was referring to. I’m not sure whether it was not explicitly explained or if I just wasn’t paying close enough attention.
I think my favorite part was probably the dialogue. I think? I just loved how formal Sol and Echo spoke to each other. Sol because she’s playing along and slightly making fun of him. And Echo because he doesn’t know anything different. Sometimes, the writing ended up sound slightly convoluted, but rather than being annoyed I found it kind of charming. (But maybe that’s just me?) His character development in this book was not something I anticipated to be so believable, but somehow I ended up falling for it. The story didn’t draw me into the characters enough to fully immerse myself in their situation, but it was close.
Overall, this book was a fun read. Not perfect, but definitely not the worst dystopian I’ve read. By far. If you’re into futuristic books with AI overlords, give this one a look.
