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Book Review: Fever (Chemical Garden book 2)

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Book Review: Fever (Chemical Garden book 2), by Lauren Destefano

Book Description from amazon.com:The second book in The Chemical Garden Trilogy reveals a world as captivating—and as dangerous—as the one Rhine left behind in Wither.
Rhine and Gabriel have escaped the mansion, but they're still in danger. Outside, they find a world even more disquieting than the one they left behind.

    Determined to get to Manhattan and find Rhine's twin brother, Rowan, the two press forward, amid threats of being captured again…or worse.

    The road they are on is long and perilous—and in a world where young women only live to age twenty and men die at age twenty-five, time is precious. In this sequel to Lauren DeStefano's harrowing Wither, Rhine must decide if freedom is worth the price—now that she has more to lose than ever.


The Review:

Fever takes up right after what Wither had left off, Rhine and Gabriel escaped from Vaughn's mansion, the pair was on the run. But what bugged me almost immediately is that the pair only enjoyed no more than a few hours of freedom before they were captured by a half-mad Madame who ran a seedy brothel. Even though the brothel and the girls in it were quite vividly and interestingly described, still I can't overlook that not only Rhine had no chance to enjoy her new-found freedom, Gabriel, a boy who had been serving as Vaughn's slave for so long, also had no real chance to even taste what freedom really was and what did it mean to be free. That really sucks.

After Rhine and Gabriel were captured, the Madame had her eyes on Rhine and wanted to exploit her......by ordering the girl and Gabriel to take part in an erotic performance. So for a few months time, they were drugged, got turned on and then ended up feeling each other up within a cage so the customers can watch the show from outside. Sorry? Rhine got thrown into a prostitution ring but she didn't have to serve the customers by having sex with them, not for once!? That sounds really lame and hypocritical to me.

Later the pair narrowly escaped Madame's brothel, taking a fellow prostitute's deformed daughter(Maddie) with them when the mother failed to make it out. The escape part is nice; and then the trio struggled their way toward Manhattan. Their trip contents a lot of hiding, pretending to be husband and wife/siblings/cousins, searching for food and shelter, etc. Some readers complained about the lack of action, still I can understand neither Rhine and Gabriel are action hero, so the lack of epic action scene is in fact understandable.

Though, I can't overlook the main couple's journey of self discovery and better understanding of the world turns out to be quite disappointing. First, Rhine and Gabriel's romance turns out to be really dim, it's not exactly a badly written romance but still there's no fire between the pair, and the trip to Manhattan does nothing to deepen their bond and understanding toward one another. Although the author mentioned about Rhine's seeing Gabriel's flaws in an attempt to make the romance look a bit more realistic, still I don't get any real sense of romance between them.

Gabriel also becomes very flat and uninteresting as a character. He is still a kind person who's willing to help, but this doesn't say much for a character. I had mentioned that I saw very little motivation for him to run away--I don't believe he and Rhine are in love, so to me the love part barely counted as a motivation, and in book 2, his lack of motivation is getting in the way of character development. First he was drugged, then he brood around suffering a withdraw. I barely see how did he react to being in the outside world with his new found freedom. I barely see any mental struggle or transition from him, Gabriel is more or less being reduced to tag along with Rhine and taking care of Maddie, the deformed little girl, he had no backstory, he had no wish and desire of his own. What a disappointment.

The escapees also encountered a number of crisis, and I like how those crisis are being played out much much more than the romance. They are nothing overly dramatic, and they created a certain amount of tension. I also liked the part where Rhine was forced to face the fact that Rowan, her twin brother might not be the person she had always believed him to be.  

In the later part of the book, old characters such as Vaughn, Linden, Cecily came back to the story. Beside Vaughn's subjecting Rhine into his terrifying experiments, Rhine also needed to face the challenge of confronting her once trusting, but now bitter and angry husband, Linden. Although I like the confrontation part and the fact that Rhine actually tried to tell Linden his father was evil, still I'm disappointed when I was told that Linden was really ignored of the fact Rhine didn't really love him. OH GOODNESS! What a horribly clueless, stupid guy! I had thought, maybe Linden had been pretending to be oblivious about Rhine's lack of real affection for him all along. But sadly it never happens.

There are also a lot of unexplained questions left even to the very end. Why must the women die at the age 20 and the men at age 25? Is it caused by some 'plague' or 'virus'; or is it caused by a genetic flaw? In the books, Rhine kept calling the cause of death  'plague' and 'virus', but what sort of 'plague' or 'virus' kills people only when they reach a certain age? It doesn't sound logical at all.

Also, what had happened to Gabriel? Where's Rowan? What role does Rowan have in the struggle between pro-naturalists and the pro-science group? Did Rowan manage to come up with some solution to save himself, his sister and the entire second generation people who were all doomed to die young? Oh yes, there're so many things we don't know about Rowan, what a pity.

Plus, what actually makes Rhine so valuable as a test subject that Vaughn would do anything to get her back? What is Vaughn really trying to achieve with his experiments?

So many questions, so many loosed ends to tidy up, and we have only one book left, I strongly doubt the author has the ability to give us a clean-cut finale for this trilogy.

Fever is not a bad book, the writing is nice, the story has some refreshing ideas going with it, some parts of it are also quite realistically written despite of some flaws and loops in world-building. If you like the first book, then I think you would also like Fever. But if you are looking for a fast paced book filled with actions, Fever would let you down.
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