Unwholly (Unwind #2) by Neal Shusterman

The sad truth about humanity, Risa was quick to realize, is that people believe what they're told. Maybe not the first time, but by the hundredth time, the craziest of ideas just becomes a given.

Unwholly starts about a year after Unwind. We have our same three protagonists from Unwind, tasking themselves with some crucial responsibilities this time, in their continuing fight against the practice of unwinding (whereby parents opt to donate their child's body parts - alive, so that other people can benefit from them). Connor is in charge of a salvaged aircraft yard where hundreds of teenagers are kept safe from the juvenile authority. Risa, crippled in an accident at the end of Unwind  takes care of medical matters, while Lev is on probation and is being monitored 24x7 by the authorities.

In addition to the three, we have three new interesting characters. Starkey is a stork (his biological mother abandoned him at someone's doorstep who would become his foster parents) who is about to be unwound but is rescued by Connor and a few others on a rescue mission. Starkey is also not used to yielding to authority and happens to be one hell of a manipulative character. Miracolina is a tithe (a sacrifice to God via unwinding and tithes love being tithes) who has just been rescued, except she didn't want to be rescued and causes much trouble to her rescuers and to Lev. And then there's Cam, the guy on the cover, the most astounding consequence of unwinding.

I'm deliberately leaving a lot out from the plot because 1. Cam's story is a lovely surprise that's best left out and 2. this is a sequel so I don't want to spoil anything. I read Unwind a few months back and found out about Unwholly just a few weeks back. Unwind was a absolutely wonderful and thrilling read so I was hoping to get more of that from Unwholly. This second book of a trilogy wasn't as excitingly paced as its prequel but it still packed plenty of twists and turns.

I liked the addition of the three new characters - Starkey and Miracolina were infuriating enough in different ways. Starkey was a complete douche - he was the perfect example of how a rift can form in a group whose members start with the same goal. Even with everyone at the yard having the same goal of staying alive until seventeen (the age beyond which one cannot be unwound) and fighting in their own harmless way against unwinding, Starkey manages to create a stork club and show how the storks need preferential treatment and be above everyone else. So much like real world - where peace is the first goal and then each sect wants its own state/country/special rules. Cam was the character I expected to hate, but funnily he had one of the most humane personalities in the book. His story raises the same questions that a lot of our medical technologies raise, on the ground of ethics but his is a story that succeeded against these opponents and while there are still plenty of naysayers, there is more acceptance.

There was one thing that I especially liked in this book - Unwholly expresses well how something that is taken for granted today could have been an alien concept at some point in the past. The very idea of unwinding was one such and to kids like Connor, they grew up in a world that accepted unwinding, so any other world was impossible to fathom. The author demonstrated how the public can be swayed easily to accept something they've been revolting against, and how time can change the perception of a lot of things.

Unfortunately, this book suffered from a lackluster writing. The captivating writing style from Unwind was nowhere to be seen here. If the plot wasn't intriguing enough, I may not have bothered with reading this book. Despite the poor writing, this is a trilogy that I would happily recommend to anyone. I don't usually enjoy YA books, primarily because I've read very few of them whose plot rings sensible to me. Since I like my books on the side of reality even in a dystopian world, this trilogy seems to be really working for me.


I borrowed this book from the good old library.