Review: Ascent by Amy Kinzer

Title: Ascent
Author: Amy Kinzer
Publication date: September 8th 2011
Age group: Young Adult
Genre: Dystopia
Cover rating: 3.5/5
Content rating: 4/5
Buy: Amazon

Description:

For three teens going back to the past is the only way to save the future.

After years of recession a new political party is ascending to power. To control the United States they must offer leaders people will vote for. The Party has chosen a select group of teens to attend the Institute for Youth Development (IYD) for training to become the nation’s next leaders. But no one has a perfect past and in a world where every moment is captured on film it has become increasingly difficult to find future politicians. Everyone has something from their past they wish they could change.

My thoughts:


Ascent took me by surprise and it is certainly a series that I am eager to follow! I was drawn in by the description. I'm really into dystopian books but sometimes it feels like they're all following the same basic concept and not straying very far from it. Ascent, however, looked like it had something different to offer, and it definitely did!

This book is based around a political party but it's much more exciting than that sounds! The Party is quickly taking over the country and now they're recruiting young people to train up for the future. The Party realizes that controversial pasts can absolutely ruin a politicians career- so they've found away around all that! Time travel has been invented and they decide they're going to send the group back in time to fix any nastiness in their past.

I loved that we got to know and follow each of the main characters closely. They were all very distinctive characters with unique voices. I actually ended up really liking and caring about all of them. They interacted well with each other and I liked when their lives started to intertwine as they all prepared for the same thing. I don't want to go into too much detail as I think it's hard  to do so without giving the whole story away. But it was fun and exciting!

The writing was a tad repetitive at the beginning but this seemed to steadily improve as the story progressed. Overall, I enjoyed the time I spent reading this and will definitely be reading the sequel whenever it is released!