Breathe [Paperback]

A science fiction novel for young adult readers. Ideal age being thirteen and up, due to some slight violence and mild adult references. But it's good enough to be enjoyed by older readers as well.

It's a dystopia describing life in a new society that has arisen following the collapse of the one that we know.

And it's the first in a trilogy, thus the story is a long way from being resolved by the end of this volume.

It runs for three hundred and seventy one pages. And is divided into five parts [four long and one very short] and fifty seven chapters.

So far so familiar.

So what does Breathe offer to make it stand out in a rather crowded genre and marketplace?

It's the story of life in the world after the Switch. In a treeless world, oxygen levels have plunged. And only a few get to live in the Pod. A self contained habitation, divided into various zones. Air is provided by the breathe corporation. Who give the residents regular vaccinations. Society is divided into two groups. Premiums and auxiliaries. Only the former are able to afford to live a good life.

Anyone who doesn't go along with society in the Pod is ejected. And anyone living outside the Pod may not last long, as there's not a lot of air there.

There are three main characters. All teenagers. Each are viewpoint characters and narrate alternating chapters each, in first person present tense. Each chapter does say who the narrator is at the start, and you do get used to them very quckly, so this isn't a problem.

Alina is a rebel. Sent into the pod on a mission.

Bea is a schoolgirl, who is very good at debating and has studied very hard all her life and is seemingly on course for a bright future with pod leadership.

Quinn is a friend of hers. Son of an important official and not quite as good at academic things as Bea. He has an eye for the girls. All except Bea, who he has never really noticed in a romantic way despite their friendship.

When Alina runs into trouble just as Quinn and Bea are going on a trip outside the Pod, he helps her escape. And th three of them find what life is like in the world outside. That there is more to their worrd than they could have ever imagined. And the choices they have to make and their resulting actions will ensure that things will never be the same again...

It's an original idea for a dystopia and it never preaches at the reader, instead forces you to think about the way this world has come to be. Once you get used to the alternating viewpoint and the characters, it does also become very readable. Alina is a little difficult to like at first but you do get used to her in due course. Bea is highly sympathetic though right from the off, because of things that happen to her early on. And Quinn is amiable enough.

The strength of the book though is in the characters because all three grow and change an awful lot over the course of the book, and what may seem like a predictable love triangle at first doesn't work out how you might expect.

All that happens comes about as a result of character choices rather than the needs of the plot, and it does manage to make some of the supporting cast appealingly three dimensional as well, as you will see from an excellent final scene for one of them.

This leaves all the character in a very different place at the end to where they started, and with long journeys ahead of them. And it also leaves you wanting to know what will happen to them next. An excellent start to what should be a good series, and I look forward to the second volume.

Breathe is a 2012 release that I'd been looking forward to for months so much so that I pushed aside a load of books I was meant to read first because I couldn't wait to read it! Even though I had high expectations before starting this book Breathe by far passed those expectations so much so that I predict that Breathe will be the next big dystopian and up there with the best of its genre equal to books like The Hunger Games and Divergent, in my opinion, it deserves to be just as successful.

What initially attracted me to Breathe was the idea of a world without trees and therefore a world where society is totally dependent on the government to provide oxygen for them. As an asthmatic I know all too well how scary it is not to be able to breathe properly which is something that plenty of people take for granted and so the concept of a world that is suffocating seemed so terrifying to me. If the premise alone wasn't intriguing enough there are plenty of exciting twists and turns along the way that make this book even more incredible.

I think what I enjoyed most about Breathe is that this future is highly plausible. There's definitely a moral to the book of looking after our planet but it's very subtle and never feels preachy. Sarah Crossan simply lays out a fictional glimpse into a future without the things we take for granted and believe will always be there and that alone is enough to get the message across.

Breathe is told in alternating chapters between three characters. Quinn a Premium boy whose father is high up in society and so he has never had to worry about not having enough oxygen and yet he's different to other Premiums and doesn't act like he's better than anyone else in society. Then there is Bea, Quinn's best friend, who is an Auxiliary. Her mother and father work hard to the point of illness just so that the three of them have enough air to get by. And then there's Alina who's part of a rebel group, and when she meets Quinn and Bea by chance, shows them that life inside and outside of the Pod is not all it seems. I loved having three very different voices narrating the story and it was so interesting to see what life is like for three different members of society.

Although I liked all three main characters my favourite hands down was Bea. Bea works really hard to help her parents and to hopefully one day become a Premium so she's able to support them in their old age. Bea's such a genuinely nice person and is really brave, selfless, and strong making her an inspirational heroine. She also happens to be hopelessly in love with Quinn although he's never seen her as anything more than a friend. My heart really went out to Bea and I enjoyed reading her chapters the most.

Overall Breathe is a wonderfully imagined, highly developed dystopian. I couldn't turn the pages fast enough and was so sad to reach the end. With a break-neck pace, conspiracy at every turn, and characters you can't help but love Breathe is a dystopian that fans of the genre won't want to miss out on!

Breathe is a dystopian YA novel with so much potential to be a mind-blowing series; I seriously hope this series takes off as much I loved it.

Breathe is about a world without Oxygen. There is a supply available but only for those deemed worthy (rich) enough for it. I kind of expected, with a concept like that, for Breathe to be good but I hadn't heard much hype about it so doubted I would be blown away. I actually loved this almost as much as Divergent - it was that good! So why there is no oxygen? There are no longer any trees and why? Because the government, of course, likes a bit of control and Oxygen is a good way to get co-operation.

I liked the ideas Crossan had. Like no high levels of activity were allowed because this used up too much oxygen so you would be fined for being over-excited, jumping, running or basically for doing anything remotely strenuous in public. Except for those with oxygen cylinders provided by the government, they can do as they please. Some of these people earned cylinders as part of a "lottery" when the oxygen initially ran out and the Pod was made. Pods are where populations now live. Areas protected by a large barrier covering the entire city - the front cover is exactly how I imagined them to look.

Within the Pod there are premiums and Auxillaries. Premiums have a constant supply of oxygen for the entire family whereas Auxillaries do not (many of them teach themselves to function with very little oxygen). The story is told from three perspectives with three first-person narratives. Quinn, a premium boy with a politically important father, and his best friend Bea, who is an auxillary, are the two key players in the narratives. Bea is clearly in love with Quinn, who doesn't seem to know she exists beyond being his best friend and Bea is competing to become a Premium for her family. Alina however, is a really interesting character. Alina is also an Auxillary (so her family, like Bea's, are desperate for air and must work countless hours to earn enough air to live). What's interesting about Alina though is that she's a rebel, part of a rebel group working to overthrow the government. Alina does not believe in the Government. She doesn't buy their rules. Alina makes her own. How? By stealing seeds and growing trees!

It was such a great idea to have three very different characters, with three very different outlooks and purposes, who are thrown together into an oxygen-less environment with nothing but oxygen-deficient air to breathe. This all happens for a variety of reasons, which you'll love so I won't say anymore about them. However, outside of the Pod there is more than a lack of oxygen to fear.

I really urge everyone to read this book. I've literally thrust my copy of this book onto everyone I know because it's so fantastic (and I haven't done that for a while much to their relief) so definitely get yourself a copy! This series is going to really take off, it has to, it's brilliant.