Review for "The Pledge" by Kimberly Derting

The Pledge by Kimberly Derting

Genre: YA/Dystopian

Page Count: 323

Plot: "In the violent country of Ludania, the classes are strictly divided by the language they speak. The smallest transgression, like looking a member of a higher class in the eye while they are speaking their native tongue, results in immediate execution. Seventeen-year-old Charlaina has always been able to understand the languages of all classes, and she's spent her life trying to hide her secret. The only place she can really be free is the drug-fueled underground clubs where people go to shake off the oppressive rules of the world they live in. It's there that she meets a beautiful and mysterious boy named Max who speaks a language she's never heard before . . . and her secret is almost exposed.

Charlie is intensely attracted to Max, even though she can't be sure where his real loyalties lie. As the emergency drills give way to real crisis and the violence escalates, it becomes clear that Charlie is the key to something much bigger: her country's only chance for freedom from the terrible power of a deadly regime." (Summary from goodreads.com)

Review: This book was better than I expected and also not quite a 5 star book. At the beginning and from the plot synopsis, I wrongly assumed that this would be another terrible dystopian young adult lost among a sea of cliched dystopia. But the Pledge was actually a decently good book with an interesting premise that was applied remarkably well for how cheesy it sounded at the beginning.

The whole idea of classes having separate languages made no sense to me at first until it was explained there were only three classes (technically four, but that's a semi-spoiler) and they all had a universal language. The way the idea of this class division and dystopian world was executed was done very well. The book reads like a stand alone novel which makes me wonder how a third book in the Pledge series is coming out.

Charlaina, the main character, at first came off as annoying and a cliched, too-perfect young adult heroine. Even her name was annoying. Luckily, she mostly goes by Charlie, which is considerably less annoying. Charlie does develop some actual character flaws although she keeps the impossibly selfless trait that most heroines share. She's overly curious and makes a lot of poor choices without really thinking them through. In short, she's not too perfect that you want to just stop reading right there.

The secret of the queen is very interesting and I will warn you right now that you need to remember the prologue very well. It's the biggest piece of foreshadowing in the whole book and, if you remember it, I guarantee you should be able to predict the ending.

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