Review: Taken by Erin Bowman

There are no men in Claysoot. There are boys—but every one of them vanishes at midnight on his eighteenth birthday. The ground shakes, the wind howls, a blinding light descends…and he’s gone.

They call it the Heist.

Gray Weathersby’s eighteenth birthday is mere months away, and he’s prepared to meet his fate–until he finds a strange note from his mother and starts to question everything he’s been raised to accept: the Council leaders and their obvious secrets. The Heist itself. And what lies beyond the Wall that surrounds Claysoot–a structure that no one can cross and survive.

Climbing the Wall is suicide, but what comes after the Heist could be worse. Should he sit back and wait to be taken–or risk everything on the hope of the other side?

My Review:

Taken is an entertaining dystopian story with great action and characterization.  It's a book that is easy to get into and enjoy.  I'll be reading the sequel when it releases next year.

POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD

Gray is a great character who may sometimes do things that keep him from being completely likeable, yet I still liked him.  He is impulsive, and he can get angry about things easier than his brother.  At the beginning of the book, it is his brother's 18th birthday, and his brother is going to be Heisted.  Within the first quarter of the story, Gray finds out several things about himself that have been kept from him, and he decides to leave Claysoot.  The rest of the story takes place once he's climbed the Wall and left his town.

 Gray has two girls in this book that he has feelings for.  This love triangle is well-written and developed naturally.  Emma is the girl from Claysoot whom he has loved for years.  When he climbs the Wall, she follows him over it.  The other girl he meets is Bree.  She is one of the Rebels, and she is a strong girl who can fight.  While I like Gray with either of these girls, I think he's better with Bree.  Bree is like Gray in some ways, so I think she'd better understand some of the things he does than Emma would.

I liked reading about the different mysteries of this dystopian world, and the bad guys who made some of these things happen.  At the beginning of Part 2, Gray finds out that Harvey is a bad guy.  He has committed many crimes, including setting up Claysoot.  He meets Frank, the leader of Taem who wants Harvey captured.  At the story progresses, Gray learns that things aren't always as they seem.  Frank may not be the good guy he pretends to be, and Harvey may not be so bad.  Sure, Harvey did some things he shouldn't have done as a teenager, but he was doing them for Frank, and he didn't realize the full implications of what he was doing.  I liked how the book revealed what the Heists really were.

If you like YA dystopian, read this book.

Katie