When She Woke [Paperback]

Hannah Payne lives in a dystopian version of America where conservative Christians are in control and criminals serve their sentences out in public, melachromed for easy identification. Hannah has commited the crime of having an abortion (classified as murder) and for that, every inch of her skin has been dyed bright red. Having spend some time on the Chrome Ward as part of a sinister reality TV programme, Hannah must now try to adapt to life as an outcast, subject to prejudice and abuse. Her every movement can be tracked and she soon becomes a target for the Fist, a radical group that hunts out and punishes chromes. With her family turning away from her, can Hannah adjust to her new life?

When She Woke is a modern retelling of the classic The Scarlett Letter. Unfortunately, I've not read the latter so I can't judge how faithful to the original it was. Hannah does refuse to name the father of her unborn child but this isn't as integral to the plot as I had imagined it to be. When She Woke is more about the dystopia of Jordan's imagined American society than anything else.

It's hard to make a judgement of this book as the first and second halves are remarkably different. The first half is about the society Hannah lives in and the reactions of her friends and family to her having the abortion, whilst the second is more action packed as Hannah struggles to escape the Fist. I liked the first half but found the second implausible and a bit silly. I was most interested in the psychological impact on Hannah - what would it be like to be branded forever as a criminal? The passages where Hannah is free and trying to interact with members of the public were fascinating.

I think some of the impact of this book was dulled by me not being American. Had I been in America, where I know abortion is more highly charged, abortion equaling murder would have been more powerful. Consequently I wanted to know more about Chromes that were different to Hannah - the blues, yellows and greens. Were they treated differently than she was?

As I mentioned above, the second half of the book was a bit of a let down. Hannah is targeted by a radical group and starts on an action packed journey to escape. I think Jordan is trying to portray Hannah's character growth as she starts to care less what others think of her but this comes across as rushed and unbelievable. There's even the inclusion of a lesbian scene that seems completely out of character for Hannah,given that only a few months earlier she was regurgitating all her evangelical parents' beliefs as facts. I truly hope the author wasn't associating feminism with lesbianism i.e because Hannah becomes a feminist, she must find other women sexually attractive. Hannah would have changed, but not as fast as Jordan made her.

On the whole, the premise of When She Woke was stronger than the execution. I'm still thinking about Chromes almost a week after finishing the book but the plot didn't measure up. A thought provoking read.

I have to admit that this book very pleasantly surprised me. The reason for that is that from the description I expected this to be a romance driven plot with some frilly dystopian icing on top as something of a gimmick to make it stand out. Fortunately I was wrong. Despite the clear romantic strand to the plot, the dystopian element is very well thought out, and in fact this futuristic world does contain that all important element of extreme developments in society that are actually just about plausible.

The plot also moves far quicker than I expected, and this really did make we want to keep turning the pages. At no point did I feel like the book stagnated, and the pace really did help to keep an element of tension throughout. This is helped not only by the development in the main character, but also in a solid supporting cast of characters, who are all believable and distinctive.

The one problem in my view is the last fifth or so of the book, which is when the plot just seems to lose its way a little. I also expected the ending to have much more bite considering the strength of what had come before, and whilst by no means terrible it wasn't as strong as I was expecting. So it can't be the full five stars, but it is still thoroughly recommended as a fine example of the genre.

An interesting premise and it all starts well but by about the half way point I was thinking "Ho-hum!", as it became a bit like that old 30s/40s movie serial "The Perils of Pauline", with massive plot developments happening off scene and being brushed off in one sentence in the next chapter ("And when you were unconscious, we rescued you").

The author's vision of future America is drip-fed to us over the course of the book and comes across as very believable, and all the more scary, given that the changes described aren't enormous on a day to day scale.

The thing that struck me most about this book was how badly the male characters were portrayed - they all seemed to be either weak willed and dominated by their wives/mothers or aggressive bruisers.

On the whole I would say I enjoyed this book and can recommend it, even if I found I was skimming it to some degree towards the end.