You can find this and other reviews at Things I Find While Shelving

I received a free ARC via NetGalley

Maybe some wars are worth fighting.

I love Beth Revis. LOVE. So much. So. You know how Star Trek was Gene Roddenberry’s way of commentating on the shit that was going down in the world in a way that wouldn’t get censored? (If you didn’t, it’s super interesting to look into). WELL I feel like Beth Revis kind of does that, too. She is not afraid to deal with important issues in her books, and just because they’re set in the future doesn’t make them any less applicable to today.

This book is no different.

There’s an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation in which Data’s humanity is brought into question - is he simply a machine to be studied so that the Federation scientists can better understand Android technology, or does he have a humanity that allows him rights? The episode is called The Measure of a Man and it remains one of my favorite episodes.

This book had me thinking of that episode quite a few times.

Ella Shepherd lives in a future world where there is an uneasy peace over the globe. After a brutal war known as the Secessionary War, the countries are united under one government as the Unified Countries. Technology has advanced. There are androids, nanobots, electronic wrist cuffs that allow you to connect with anyone at the press of a key, plus some technology sent back from the expedition that made it to Centauri Earth (This book is set in the same universe as the Across the Universe trilogy).

Both of Ella’s parents are scientists. Ella’s father died in what she was told was a terrorist attack - people attempting to steal his research into Nanobots and Androids. Ella’s mother is dying of a disease known as Hebb’s Disease that causes the space between neurons to grow wider, affecting a person’s senses. Ella’s mom developed a process known as Reverie - a sort of lucid dreaming - to allow people to relive their best memories.

Ella uses the reveries to help her mother feel less sick, to make her happy while she’s still deteriorating. But the reveries are stopping working, and Ella grows desperate and decides to try something her mother came up with, but felt was too great a risk because it involved giving a person more nanobots. Ella decides to go into her mother’s Reverie.

I can control my mother’s reverie, like a puppet master pulling strings.

Except Ella isn’t the only puppet master in the wings.

When her mother’s friend and business partner, Ms. White, finds out that Ella can go into other people’s minds, she and the head of the Unified Countries - Prime Administrator Hwa Young - enlist her to help them ferret out terrorists they believe are still hiding and working against the government. Ella agrees. Terrorists killed her father, of course she’ll work against them.

But each foray into a reverie brings her closer and closer to going mad - between hearing buzzing sounds and seeing her father, Ella cannot understand why she is having so much trouble with other people’s reveries. Add to that a boy who knows her, though she does not know him, and her conviction that he is a member of the terrorist group she is working against breaking down as she discovers more and more, Ella learns that there’s more going on than she ever could have imagined.

And when her mother is replaced, she starts on a journey to stop whatever’s going on, to learn the truth and keep it from sending the world into another war.

And to reclaim her own lost memories in the process.

Can you betray a government that’s already betrayed you?

Some twists and turns you can see coming, but not in a “that was supposed to be a surprise” kind of way, more of a “I knew it!” kind of way. Other twists punch you in the gut.

Another excellent story from Beth Revis.