Roaring Reviews: Paradigm by Ceri A. Lowe

Title: Paradigm
Publication Date: June 13, 2014 by Bookouture
Author: Ceri A. Lowe
Format: eARC

Plot Synopsis:

What if the end of the world was just the beginning?

Alice Davenport awakens from a fever to find her mother gone and the city she lives in ravaged by storms – with few survivors.

When Alice is finally rescued, she is taken to a huge underground bunker owned by the mysterious Paradigm Industries. As the storms worsen, the hatches close.

87 years later, amidst the ruins of London, the survivors of the Storms have reinvented society. The Model maintains a perfect balance – with inhabitants routinely frozen until they are needed by the Industry.

Fifteen-year-old Carter Warren knows his time has come. Awoken from the catacombs as a contender for the role of Controller General, it is his destiny to succeed – where his parents failed.

But Carter soon discovers that the world has changed, in ways that make him begin to question everything that he believes in. As Carter is forced to fight for those he loves and even for his life, it seems that the key to the future lies in the secrets of the past...

The Actual Review:

An ARC has been procured from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. 

This is the first time that I am placing a book within my Did-Not-Finish shelf in Goodreads. Now don't get me wrong, I liked the plot to this book it was interesting enough; the characters were okay. However the only thing that bothered me was the writing style.

The main reason why I stopped at page 41 of this book is that first, it's descriptions of things would just leave me more confused than before, and at the end it would've been just better to leave things up to the reader's imaginations. Lastly is the feel. During my bout with the book, there was that unsettling thought, that I have to constantly temper, saying that what I am reading is a short story or a mediocre fanfic of some sorts.

The book throws the reader immediately within the midst of its world, which left me totally confused with what is going on. It's like trying to understand an entire topic by eavesdropping at two people and only hearing snippets of their conversation. And if you're like me who would read and reread the entire scene over and over again just to eke out meaning from the text, you would find it frustrating to do it repetitively.

Another thing that aggravated me was the persistent use of horizontal rules in the formatting even when unnecessary. It diverts the attention of the reader from the story; as it is, I'm already finding it very hard to get into the story, so a horizontal rule would just leave that interest I've managed to muster up into ashes.

To Ceri A. Low and to any staff of Bookouture, I am truly and deeply sorry for writing this. I tried to love it with my entire entity, but with a plethora of books sitting beside my bbed, it's very hard how not to put this down and pick one from them instead. I'm sorry.