Book Review - The Jewel

The Jewel
Author: Amy Ewing
Series: The Lone City #1
Genres: Science Fiction, Dystopian | Young Adult
Release Date: 4th September 2014
Publishers: Walker Books Ltd
No. Pages: 368
Source: Borrowed
Rating: 
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"Today is my last day as Violet Lasting.
Tomorrow I become Lot 197."

Sold for six million diamantes, Violet is now Surrogate of the House of the Lake in the centre of the Lone City, the Jewel. Her sole purpose is to produce a healthy heir for the Duchess – a woman Violet fears and despises.

Violet is trapped in a living death, her name and body no longer her own. She fights to hold on to her own identity and sanity, uncertain of the fate of her friends, isolated and at the mercy of the Duchess.

The Jewel is one of the many new dystopian books to come out in the last few years, since everyone read and loved The Hunger Games we have seen a influx of books set in the future with the main person facing some sort of difficulty, in Delirium we had a world where love was a disease, in Divergent we had a world that patterned your personality and made you wrong for being different and many more. So when I first heard what The Jewel was going to be about, I added it straight to my TBR list, though I admit I was a little cautious because some dystopian novels I've read have had a really strong idea, but something was lost along the way. And I'm sad to say that it's exactly how I felt about this book.

The book is centered around Violet Lasting, a 16 year old girl who has spent the past 4 years in a holding facility training to be a surrogate. A long time ago, the Royals discovered that they're genetic makeup made it so they were unable to have kids, so they started looking outside for solutions only to find out that Auguries (magic..) that some women carried in their genes could cancel out the deformities that the royalty's breeding caused. In short they started rounding up everyone who had the Auguries and taking them away from their family to learn how to use the magic, till such time they would be sold at The Auction to a high standing lady and be artificial inseminated to have said persons baby.

When you put the concept like that it sounds really good right? and for the most part it was, when I first started reading it I was completely hooked on the storyline, I was however a little confused because it wasn't until around half way through that they actual explained why the Royals couldn't have kids, but I hoped that sooner or later I would get the explanation I wanted. Between the waiting , not an awful lot happened and the story just seemed to go downhill very quick. And though we learnt a little bit about the history, I don't actually remember reading anything that stated where the Auguries actually came from.

Perhaps my biggest problem with this book was the love aspect of it, considering it was a big part of it you would assume that it would be really well thought out and described, really well done and you could almost feel what the characters where as they pages went on, right? ..Well no. It was like from the point of meeting Ash, Violet was in love. To me it felt like that when the book started off, we had this really interesting story only for it to be Ash dominated from the minuet she met him, I for one am a massive fan of love in stories but when it's done so poorly like it was in this book I just think whats the point? I have no doubt in my mind that it could have continued to be a really good story and unique if they just had left out the instant love. The ending of the book was another big no no for me. One thing I can't stand more than anything is predictability and the ending had it all, it was so obvious what was going to happen that I couldn't feel despair or being upset with the characters.

I wanted so badly to like The Jewel, because it had the potential to be a really unique and original dystopian novel, but sadly I just feel that Amy Ewing's priorities with what was important were all wrong. The character development was almost nonexistent and the world building just slowed to a halt. I'm giving this book 3 stars, because I feel it could have been so much better and like I said, I really liked the theory behind it. Will I carry on with the series? I can't promise anything just yet.