Review: Article 5



Article 5 by Kristen Simmons

Published by Tor Teen

Genre: YA dystopian

$17.99 (US hardback)

364 pages

What it'sNew York, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., have been abandoned.

The Bill of Rights has been revoked, and replaced with the Moral Statutes.

There are no more police—instead, there are soldiers. There are no more fines for bad behavior—instead, there are arrests, trials, and maybe worse. People who get arrested usually don't come back.

Seventeen-year-old Ember Miller is old enough to remember that things weren't always this way. Living with her rebellious single mother, it's hard for her to forget that people weren't always arrested for reading the wrong books or staying out after dark. It's hard to forget that life in the United States used to be different.

Ember has perfected the art of keeping a low profile. She knows how to get the things she needs, like food stamps and hand-me-down clothes, and how to pass the random home inspections by the military. Her life is as close to peaceful as circumstances allow.

That is, until her mother is arrested for noncompliance with Article 5 of the Moral Statutes. And one of the arresting officers is none other than Chase Jennings—the only boy Ember has ever loved.



My thoughts:
I love how there are more and more dystopian books coming out. I can't seem to read them fast enough.

Article 5 is set in America, somewhere over on the east coast at some unknown future time. It was never said. And a war happened a few years back that caused all of the major US cities to be destroyed. I think it said the war was 8 years long, but I'm not positive. It also never said how it happened, and who it was against. All we know is that it was bad and it made the government decide it does not like the constitution anymore and everything that was in the constitution is now the exact opposite. There is only one religion, Religion of America, people do not have the right to own weapons, there is no such thing as free speech, people are guilty until proven innocent, and most people never get a fair trial.

So in other words, life in America just plain old sucks.

I really wish that there would have been more back story. I didn't have any trouble believing that America was ganged up on and a huge war broke out. That was perfectly believable. I did however have a very hard time believing in the new government system. How the war made us go back about 300 years was strange to me. I just couldn't buy into it.

Characters: I had a really hard time liking Ember. She wasn't a bad character and I loved the relationship between her and her mother, but Ember did some really stupid things. Really really really stupid things. And when it came to Chase, she was even more dumb. I couldn't believe it. She made me so angry most of the time. Then all the sudden right at the end, there was this huge character change in her, that somehow fit and seemed real, and I ended up liking her. I did like Chase through the whole book. He is a broken down boy who has had to see and deal with more than anyone his age, or anyone in general, should have to see.

This whole review has pretty much been my complains about the book, but I did enjoy reading it. It had my attention and I was curious as to how it was going to end and I cared about the characters. I was happy with how it ended and I think I will leave it at that. I do not plan on continuing with this series.

My rating: 7.5/10