Uptown Oracle Reads… This Mortal Coil

Catarina Agatta is an all round gene-hacking genius. Her father Dr. Lachlan Agatta, a legendary geneticist, was kidnapped by a shadowy organization called Cartaxus, leaving Cat to survive the last two years on her own. Cartaxus soldier, Cole, arrives with news that her father has died and also brings a message: before he died, he managed to create a vaccine, and Cole needs Cat’s help to release it and save the human race.

The world building and explanations about the virus and apocalyptic events were really unique to this story. I felt that the people with the virus detonating to spread it was something I’d never read about before. Also, there’s a backwards cannibalistic element for people to become immune to the zombie like virus. This was really out of nowhere, and I was excited to keep reading the book because of it.

Unfortunately, my excitement was marred by too much focus on romance and use of tropes. There were tropes upon cliches upon tropes throughout the book. There’s the male soldier and female rebel romance. There’s an unnecessary love triangle which was highly predictable. The ‘good guys’ end up seeming not as good as we first thought. Even the lead up to the romance seemed to recycle old cliches from other YA books.

Luckily, after all the tropes and romance there is a good plot line and some really interesting twists. Some of them I saw coming, some of them I did not. I was really excited at these times and was fully absorbed into reading. I thin Suvada has done really well at mapping out the story and what the main plot points are. I just think she’s tried to fill too much of the middle with romance elements which don’t lend to the plot. The relationship between characters could have stayed platonic and it would have had the same end goal.

None of the characters really stood out to me. I think this is because the main characters all seem to be from Cat’s perspective and she herself isn’t sure on the people she’s around. With both Dax and Cole she seems to switch between argumentative and friendly very quickly between chapters.

This will be part of a trilogy, which does make me slightly interested. I would like to know how Suvada would actually extend this over two books, but I don’t think I could carry on reading about the romance.

Positives:

+ Creative and unique apocalypse story – the Wrath and the way the virus spreads in particular.

+ Interesting and I didn’t see it coming plot twist.

+ Good world building.

Negatives:

– Predictable love triangle.

– Male soldier and rebel girl romance cliche

– Felt like it borrowed heavily from other books at times.

I received This Mortal Coil* by Emily Suvada from the publisher via NetGalley. This is an unbiased and honest review.