Crashed

Author: Robin Wasserman
Genre: YA, Scifi, sequel to "Skinned"
Grade: B+

Here is a blurb from the authors website:

No one to trust... everything to lose.

Before the accident, Lia Kahn was happy.

Before the accident, Lia Kahn was loved.

Before, Lia was a lot of things: Normal. Alive. Human.

Lia no longer lives in before.

Lia is a mech: a teenager whose memories have been downloaded into a mechanical body. Dangerous to her former friends and family and not really wanted by them anyway she is currently living with other mechs at an estate in the land of the privileged. An errand has her enter the city though, the rough area where those not working in a corp town or the world of the privileged must eek out an existence in any way they can. Here Lia comes face to face with the past that belonged to three of her housemates - and the future that just might be hers if the Brotherhood of Man wins their political push against the mechs.

It is odd how the littlest things can turn you on to or off of a book. When I read the "Marked" series by the Cast's I hated the clearly anti-religious bent of the books. There is a whiff (and sometimes more than a whiff) of that here but that is not the sole purpose of these books. Here religion is used only when it comes up against something like Lia, something new and unnatural in a world that is hard to explain already. And the focus stays on Lia, her day to day struggles to come to terms with who and what she is in a world that is asking exactly that same question. I really enjoyed how all the characters have motives and histories that are revealed only a piece at a time for us and how the worlds of some people who would rather not know the other existed are hopelessly enmeshed by their past history. The action here is taut and thrilling, the characterization solid and complex. I enjoyed this one much more than the first and am looking forward to book three.

Tea: What tea will we drink in the future? Something artificial and cheap I think so reach for a cup of Lipton ;p