Review of "Reboot"

"I hated the screaming."

     Reboot, Amy Tintera's YA thriller, takes readers into the world of a teenaged super soldier. Wren Connolly was twelve years old when she took three bullets to the chest and died. One hundred seventy-eight minutes later, she woke up in the Dead Room, surrounded by corpses and screaming at the top of her lungs. Now, after five years, Wren One-seventy-eight is the deadliest Reboot in the Human Advancement and Repopulation Corporation. She's fast, strong, quick-healing, and, thanks to almost three hours of death, all but emotionless. But Callum Twenty-two, her newest trainee, is different; he's slower, weaker, and more emotional than most Reboots. Most importantly, he refuses to eliminate any of their assignments--a fact Command is unwilling to overlook. They deliver Wren an ultimatum: get Callum to do as he's told, eliminate him herself, or die. But this soldier is done following orders.

     From the first sentence, Tintera immerses her readers in an action-packed thrill ride that promises a great plot, strong characters, and a very real world. Wren One-seventy-eight thinks she's emotionless, a robot derived of her humanity. She goes on assignments, captures the humans in question, and boards the returning shuttle without hesitating or asking a single question. Yet, somehow, the author manages to prove that Wren is wrong about herself. At first she experiences irritation and anger, but as the story goes on she begins to rediscover other feelings she thought she'd lost. This development really shapes Wren into who she is destined to be. By slowly unveiling the various corners of her personality, we see Wren as she sees herself, which allows us to truly connect with her and even accept and forgive her for her faults.

     "Action" is the only way to describe the pacing in Reboot. Wren and Callum don't start out as rebels, but that doesn't mean they sit around drinking tea. They train together every day and go out into the city of Rosa to apprehend "assignments" on a regular basis. This usually consists of finding and beating humans until they are too injured to resist arrest. By documenting solo assignments as well as training missions, Callum's influence on Wren is quickly made startlingly clear, to readers and to Wren herself. And since Tintera takes her time bringing her characters around to rebellion, we not only learn to love her protagonist and love interest, but also appreciate the full extent of their actions and development. Few things happen overnight, which makes everything that much more realistic.

     The worldbuilding in this novel is fantastic. Although Wren doesn't spend a whole lot of time actually exploring it, we learn a lot about this alternate future through everything she does. A killer virus has wiped out a great deal of the human population; those who survive are Rebooted and enslaved by HARC. Humans live in small, isolated cities divided into a rico sector and slums, terrified of spreading KDH, the virus that creates the Reboots they fear. All this and more is revealed through dropped hints and brief descriptions, constructing a potential Republic of Texas that is very, very real.

     Although the Reboots hunt and sometimes kill humans, the villain in this piece is definitely HARC. They are the ones who isolate the Reboots, train them to fight, and use them to control criminals and rebels alike. Since these undead soldiers heal quickly, they're thrown into the field with nothing more than a helmet to protect them from the bullets that fly their way. Wren, Callum, and her roommate Ever are all injured on a regular basis, and inflict great injury on others as well. And when a Reboot rebels, HARC puts an end to it--violently. Aside from the mild gore and a bit of swearing, the only potential flag-raiser is the Reboots' unconcerned approach to romance. Wren is the only one who doesn't form physical attachments, though she's very candor about what does on around her. No one, however, is crude in any way.

     I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a heart-pounding YA novel about a strong female protagonist who puts the good of others before her own. Wren is a kick-butt fighter who is easy to connect to, and the other characters are just as sympathetic. The world they live in is beautifully fleshed-out before they even set foot in it on their own, and everything that happens fits perfectly with the story around it. Amy Tintera has written a wonderful story with Reboot, a five-star book if ever there was one.