Article 5

Ok, I just finished Article 5 by Kristen Simmons yesterday. I needed a day to process before I posted. This may turn into a political/ religious rant, so bare with me.

The book started off with promise, well, at least from reading the jacket of it. A lot of the main cities have been abandoned or just bombed the heck out of. The Bill of Rights is no longer used. Instead, there is a Moral Statute in place Ok, so far it's a good set up to a good dystopian read.

I am older then the target audience for this read by 10 years. So, I'm a little more politically knowledgeable in some areas, then the audience it is geared for and it rubbed me the wrong way.

But before I get into that, the writing is ok. I wouldn't call it stellar, because the choppiness of the story with Ember's flashbacks took away the flow of the story. Ember is the main character in Article 5. She is a 17 year old girl, who lives with her single mom. You only get to see a little bit of her life before the Moral Militia takes her and her mom off for being Article 5 violators. Ember is separated from her mom and sent on a reform school for girls, per the law under the new Moral Statues.

America has just come out of a war on our soil, with a lot of people over seas who don't like us (no big surprise there), however, while reading you just get a brief mentions of it. You have no idea what really happened, who attacked, nothing. You also have no idea, how the person who is president became so, or how the laws became what they did. There are so many gaps that left me goings, what about....?

All Ember wants to do is find her mom and go into hiding. She tries several different times to escape from the reform school, only to be punished. On one of her final attempts, the MM, who were patrolling the area found her and hauled her off to the shack, where the severe punishment was going to be dealt out. However, she is rescued by her former boyfriend, Chase. Who had been drafted into the MM. The MM is now what was the police system and military system, now combined. From here, it is Chase and Ember's journy to get to safety and to find her mom as fugitives.

That was the basic jist of the book. Now what got me thinking on this book, is well, first the religion in it. There isn't much in it, as in the characters are not. However, in the book, there is a Church of America now. Modesty reins supreme. However, every time I read it, I couldn't help but feel it was the muslim religion, just coated over with the Bible. Plus, the nonconformity to the Church of America was punishable. If you are Jewish, it was punishable. The strict nature of it, down to the fact that women were not protected from abuse from their husbands or family. Everything is going towards the fault of women. Women are punished for being "loose". Divorce is now against the law. Everything about it screamed muslim, but it's not since the Bible is there. It seemed like a bash on Christianity.

Now from the political side, it seemed like a major bash on conservatism. Everything that is considered good, was taken to the extremes and turned bad. The complete control of the people by the goverment is something the conservatives are against, but here it they have taken over completely. With the heavy push right off the bat, I couldn't help feel that the author is liberal and trying to push her views in the book. Religious and conservative people are trying to control us and this is what could happen.

The book just seemed off in so many ways and it ended predictably. I say it's not to read.